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THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 From the collection of 
 Julius Doerner, Chicago 
 Purchased, 1918, 
 
 PROS, 
 Beot 
 
 
 
The person charging this material is re- 
 sponsible for its return to the library from 
 which it was withdrawn on or before the 
 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
 Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books 
 are reasons for disciplinary action and may 
 result in dismissal from the University. 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 L161— 0-1096 
 
 
 

 

 

 
Pe eee Lek E 5 
 
 ON THE 
 
 EVIDENCES or. CHRISTIANITY 
 
 IN 
 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE MERCER STREET CHURCII, NEW YORK, 
 JANUARY 21 TO FEBRUARY 21, 1867. 
 
 ON THE 
 
 “ELY FOUNDATION” OF THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 
 By ALBERT BARNES, 
 
 AUTIOR OF 
 
 ‘*NOTES ON THE NEW TESTAMENT,” ‘‘ NOTES ON THE PSALMS,” 
 ; ETC., ETC. 
 
 ITS WV OTK 2 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE, 
 
 1868, 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and 
 sixty-seven, by 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, 
 In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York. 
 
UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, 
 
 NEW YORK. 
 
 Cee el Yo Cr URES HEP 
 
 ON 
 
 Che Evidences of Christianity. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 BY LHE REV. ALBERT BARNES, 
 
 OF PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 CC1L9385 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 
 
 THIs course of Lectures on the Evidences of Chris- 
 tianity in the Nineteenth Century was delivered, by 
 appointment, as the first course on the foundation es- 
 tablished in the Union Theological Seminary by Mr. 
 Zebulon Stiles Ely, of New York, in the following 
 terms : 
 
 “The undersigned gives the sum of ten thousand 
 dollars to the Union Theological Seminary of the city 
 of New York, to found a lectureship in the same, the 
 title of which shall be ‘The Elias P. Hly Lectures on 
 the Evidences of Christianity.’ 
 
 “The course of Lectures given on this foundation 
 is to comprise any topics that serve to establish the 
 proposition that Christianity is a religion from God, 
 or that it is the perfect and final form of religion for 
 man. : 
 
 ‘‘ Among the subjects discussed may be— 
 
 “The Nature and Need of a Revelation ; 
 
 “The Character and Influence of Christ and his 
 Apostles ; 
 
 “The Authenticity and Credibility of the Scrip- 
 tures: Miracles and Prophecy ; 
 
vi PREFACE, 
 
 “The Diffusion and Benefits of Christianity; and 
 
 ‘The Philosophy of Religion in its Relation to the 
 Christian System. 
 
 ‘“‘Upon one or more of such subjects .a course of 
 ten public Lectures shall be given at least once in 
 two or three years. The appointment of the Lecturer 
 is to be by the concurrent action of the directors and 
 faculty of said seminary and the undersigned; and 
 it shall ordinarily be made two years in advance. 
 
 “The interest of the fund is to be devoted to the 
 payment of the Lecturers and the publication of the 
 Lectures within a year after the delivery of the same. 
 The copyright of the volumes thus published is to 
 be vested in the seminary. 
 
 ‘In case it should seem more advisable, the di- 
 rectors have it at their discretion at times to use the 
 proceeds of this fund in providing special courses of 
 lectures or instruction in place of the aforesaid public 
 lectures for the students of the seminary on the above- 
 named subjects. 
 
 ‘Should there at any time be a surplus of the fund, 
 the directors are authorized to employ it in the way 
 of prizes for dissertations by students of the seminary 
 upon any of the above topics, or of prizes for essays 
 thereon, open to public competition. 
 
 ‘“ ZEBULON STILES ELY. 
 — § New York, May 8th, 1865.” 
 
GONTLE NTS: 
 
 
 
 LECTURE . PAGE 
 
 I. Tut Limitations oF THE HumAN MIND oN THE Sup- 
 PR Eee Me TRIBE SOTON, Co, cu cscindacdanvasgacssadecdesev¥iesissesste 9 
 II. HisroricaL EvipENCE AS AFFECTED BY TIME.,............ 41 
 Ill. Historica, EvipENCcE AS AFFECTED BY SCIENCE........ 75 
 
 IV. THe Evipence oF CHRISTIANITY FROM ITS PROPAGA- 
 EER ee are tan ya Fe ne eats cee ECA Tw Ek paws Shs di 5 50 ohia eeverine ELE 
 
 V. Mriractes: THE EVIDENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CEN- 
 TURY THAT THEY WERE PERFORMED IN THE First... 151 
 
 VI. THe ARGUMENT FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, IN 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, FROM PROPHECY.......... 194 
 
 VII. INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES WITH REFERENCE TO 
 THE OBJECTIONS MADE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 226 
 
 VIII. THe EvipENcE OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN oF CHRISTIAN- 
 ITY FROM THE PERSONAL CHARACTER AND THE IN- 
 TEMRMATHIN, ORE CHIRIST:, 0c ccticccasv¥ccesscasvessunvanchave ean yd 
 
 bo 
 
 IX. THe CuristTIAN RELIGION AS ADAPTED TO THE WANTS 
 oF MAN, AS ILLUSTRATED IN THESE EIGHTEEN Hunp- 
 are SOR eae Paes ite. ct oii. tnd wh cape ovsedavaceeeew Oe 
 
 X. THe RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE WORLD'S 
 PROGRESS IN SCIENCE, CIVILIZATION, AND THE ARTS 
 PN THE. NINETEENTH CENTURY occsccccssecsivycctctcceceesse O44 
 
 ST Ste been oer os Ved) Be. os onc suedsborkddakecraeetenes itecctn AOD 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE LIMITATIONS OF THE HUMAN MIND ON THE SUB- 
 r JECT OF RELIGION, 
 
 I HAVE been requested to deliver a course of lectures 
 in this seminary on the “ Ely Foundation,” on the “ Evi- 
 dences of Christianity.” By the terms of that “ Foun- 
 dation” the course is to “comprise any topics that serve 
 to establish the proposition that Christianity is a relig- 
 ion from God, or that it is the perfect and final form 
 of religion for man.” Among the subjects discussed, 
 as specified, may be, 
 
 “The nature and need of a revelation; 
 “The character and influence of Christ and his apos- 
 tles ; 
 
 “The authenticity and credibility. of the Scriptures: 
 miracles and prophecy ; 
 
 “The diffusion and benefits of Christianity ; and 
 
 “The philosophy of religion in its relation to the 
 Christian system.” 
 
 The course, by the terms of the “ Foundation,” is to 
 be comprised in Ten Lectures, and the general subject 
 which I shall endeavor to illustrate in this course will be 
 THE EvipENCES OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE NINETEENTH 
 Century. Ihave selected this as being in accordance 
 with the subjects suggested for the general course; as 
 
 Av? 
 
10 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 sufficiently comprehensive to embrace the points which 
 can be considered in so limited’a course; as suggesting 
 important inquiries in regard to the present relation of 
 Christianity to the world; and as leading to the dis- 
 cussion of topics originated or matured in our own age, 
 and difficulties suggested in this age, which must be 
 met by those who are, by their office and by the pur- 
 poses of their lives, to be regarded as the public defend- 
 ers of Christianity. 
 
 Christianity now exists as among the undisputed 
 great moral powers or forces in the world. It has a 
 place among other powerful systems of religion, and 
 among philosophical systems, deeply affecting the des- 
 tinies of mankind. lt has a history of its own—a his- 
 tory extending now through more than eighteen centu- 
 ries, and leaving unmistakable evidence of its exist- 
 ence and its power on the general course of events. It 
 is a “power” on the earth undeniably exerting a vast 
 influence on human affairs. 
 
 It is very closely connected with liberty, with do- 
 mestic arrangements, with civilization, with literature, 
 with the arts of life, with manners, customs, and laws, 
 with the governments of the nations, with the adminis- 
 tration of justice, with the doctrine of human rights, 
 with prevailing views of morals, with the prospects of 
 the world in regard to the future, and with the relig- 
 ious hopes of individual men. It was among the things, 
 even in its feeble beginning, which Tacitus could not 
 pass over wholly in silence; one of the things which 
 demanded all the talent of Mr. Gibbon to explain, and 
 which now, whatever may be men’s individual faith in 
 it, must enter into every philosophical view which is 
 taken of the present condition and prospects of the 
 world. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. -} 
 
 In regard to many or most of those things referred 
 to — civilization, literature, arts, manners, customs, 
 laws, governments, the administration of justice, the 
 doctrine of human rights, the prevailing views of mor- 
 als, and the hopes of men in regard to the future, it 
 has either originated them, or it has shown a decided 
 affinity for them, combining readily with them when 
 suggested, enlarging their sphere of influence, and seiz- 
 ing upon them for its own promotion and perpetuity in 
 the world. In this respect it is unlike all other forms 
 of religion, and has now become so incorporated with 
 those things, and so identified with them, that it could 
 not be detached from them without disturbing,,if not 
 destroying, the whole frame-work of modern society. 
 The Christian religion was fatal to many things that 
 entered into the notions of civilization, the laws, and 
 the governments of the ancient world, as it will be to 
 many of those things as they exist in other lands if it 
 is propagated among them; nor could those ancient 
 things be restored, or those modern things be perpetu- 
 ated, without an entire destruction of the Christian sys- 
 tem. . 
 
 It is a perfectly fair question for any one to ask, 
 What is the origin of this system of religion? and the 
 question is one whichhe friends of the system may be 
 held to answer. Is it of man? Is it a development or 
 outgrowth of some former system of religion? Is it a 
 necessary result of the progress of the race in civiliza- 
 tion—on the same level, in this respect, with the com- 
 forts of domestic life, the blessings of liberty, the useful 
 arts, the sciences? Is it a well-executed imposture ? 
 for such it must be if it is an imposture at all. Is it. 
 the result of delusion and fanaticism? Is it expressive 
 of the conscious wants of man, founded on a myth, and 
 
Tr? LECTURES ON THE 
 
 wrought by human wisdom into a system that com- 
 mends itself to enlightened understandings, and to 
 hearts troubled by sin and sorrow, as being all that 
 man needs? Or is it of divine origin, as it claims to be 
 
 —a true revelation from God? 
 
 The Westminster Review (January, 1866) therefore 
 is perfectly right in asking the question, “ How did 
 Christianity originate? Did it originate as an out- 
 coming of a natural order, or by a supernatural inter- 
 ference ?” 7 
 
 The question implies that it had an “ origin,” that is, 
 a beginning at some time since man began to exist on 
 the earth. It is not, as is implied in the question, coe- 
 val with man. There was a time when it did not exist; 
 when there was no trace of it on the earth. History, 
 in each and every ancient nation, so far as those nations 
 have a history, goes back to a period when Christianity 
 did not exist. It was not in Egypt, in Assyria, in Bab- 
 ylonia, among the Chaldees, in the Teutonic nations, 
 among the early inhabitants of the British Isles. Have 
 the annals of any nation preserved the record of its 
 origin, so that now, after the lapse of ages, and after it 
 has been matured in its present form, we can under- 
 stand how it made its beginning in our world? Did 
 the wants of men suggest it? Did the friend of men 
 devise it? Did the wisdom of God, seeing that it was 
 needful for man, reveal it ? 
 
 It is with a view to furnishing an answer to these 
 questions that the Course of Lectures on the “Ely 
 Foundation” in this seminary has been established, and 
 that. the range of topics which I have indicated has 
 been suggested as limiting the subjects to be discussed 
 in the Lectures, and specifying the field to be occupied. 
 The range is a wide one, and it can not be supposed, as 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ca 
 
 it was not designed, that the subjects should be ex- 
 hausted in a single course. It is wisely intended that 
 the course shall be continued from year to year, not by 
 the same lecturer,-but by new lecturers, with fresh 
 minds and hearts, with new powers, with views taken 
 from different stand-points, with the results of varied ex- 
 perience and observation, with illustrations drawn fresh 
 from the experience of pastors in the work of the minis- 
 try, and especially with a designed reference to the wants 
 of the world, and the state of the public mind outside 
 the Church, as demanded by tle progress of science, by 
 new difficulties that spring up, by questions that have 
 not before occurred that may.need solution, by new 
 forms of objection that may be made to the Bible, by 
 new aspects of philosophy, presenting to the minds of 
 thinking men new difficulties in regard to the Christian 
 System. 
 
 I have selected as the main topic on which I propose 
 to address you, leaving ampler fields to those who shall 
 follow me, The Evidences of the Truth of Christianity 
 in the Nineteenth Century :—at a time when eighteen 
 hundred years have passed away since the evidence of 
 its divine origin was first submitted to the world; when 
 it has been tried in its applications to the wants of men 
 during those eighteen hundred eventful years; now, in 
 an age remarkable for its advancement, and when evi- 
 dence on all subjects is examined by rules unknown to 
 the world at the time when the evidences of the divine 
 origin of the Christian system was first submitted to 
 mankind, and by an acuteness of investigation far in ad- 
 vance of that age. As Christianity convinced the men 
 of that generation of its divine origin, it can not be im- 
 proper to inquire whether the evidence that was deem- 
 ed satisfactory then in regard to its origin should be 
 
14 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 regarded as satisfactory now. The lapse of eighteen 
 hundred years may at least suggest the inquiry whether 
 it had at first any claims to the attention which it re- 
 ceived from mankind. 
 
 Under the general topic which I have suggested, I 
 propose to embrace the following subordinate topics as 
 comprehended in it: The limitations of the human mind 
 on the subject of religion; Historical evidence as af- 
 fected by time; Historical evidence as affected by sci- 
 ence; the evidence of Christianity from its propaga- 
 tion, as that evidence eXists at present; Miracles—the 
 evidence in the nineteenth century that they were per- 
 formed in the first; Prophecy, as that evidence exists 
 now; the inspiration of the Scriptures with reference 
 to the objections made to it at present; the personal 
 character and the incarnation of Christ; the religion 
 itself as adapted to the wants of man, as illustrated 
 in these eighteen hundred years; and the relation of 
 Christianity to the present stage of the world’s progress 
 in science, civilization, and the arts. 
 
 I may be allowed, before entering upon the particular 
 subject before us at this time, to refer to a difficulty 
 which I very sensibly feel in undertaking this course 
 at all. It is the supposition which seems to be implied 
 in such a course that I could do any thing supplement- 
 ary to the instructions which are, in the regular course, 
 delivered from the Chair of Theology in this seminary. 
 The proprieties of the place and the occasion would not 
 allow me to speak, as my feelings would prompt me to, 
 of him who occupies that chair, and whose time is de- 
 voted, yet in the full vigor of life, to this very inquiry, 
 among others in his course, and who enjoys advantages 
 for instructing others in studies of this nature which 
 can nét be expected from one whose time is so much 
 occupied with the routine of pastoral duties. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 15 
 
 There are a few things, however, which I may be al- 
 lowed to say in reference to what seems to be presump- 
 tion in undertaking such a task, and which may be ap- 
 plicable to the very purpose of endowing such a lec- 
 tureship, as well as to my own undertaking. (a) It is 
 known to all that different views of the same subject 
 may be taken by different individuals from the points 
 of observation which they respectively occupy, and 
 that it may require a comparison of many such views 
 to obtain a complete idea of any one object or subject. 
 From how many different points may a landscape, a 
 waterfall, a mountain, an ancient castle be viewed, each 
 presenting some different aspect to the painter, each 
 varied, yet each true, and all entering into the proper 
 and full conception of the object. On moral and his- 
 torical subjects this is not less true than it is in refer- 
 ence to mountains, to valleys, to waterfalls, to piles of 
 architectural beauty or grandeur. He makes no as- 
 sumption for himself who surveys from his own point 
 of observation what has been painted by another from 
 his. In the position which he occupies, and in the 
 work of art which he attempts, there is no implied re- 
 flection on another. (0) On the great subjects of relig- 
 ion and morals, one man’s reflection, experience, and ob 
 servation may suggest something of value which may 
 not have occurred to another. His own mental struc- 
 ture may be different, his own habits of thought may be 
 different, his own experience in the world may be differ- 
 ent, his own opportunities of observation may be differ- 
 ent; and it is no reflection on another one, though en- 
 gaged in the same general purpose, to submit his own 
 reflections to his fellow-men. (c) It may be true that, 
 while there are great advantages, on such subjects, 
 from the fact of being devoted to one great line of 
 
16 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 study, as in a chair of theology, and in the ample ac- 
 quaintance which may be derived from such a position 
 with all that has been written by others, there may be 
 advantages in the labors ofa pastoral life, in frequent 
 contact with men, in meeting the difficulties in the 
 minds of those who are inquiring on the subject of per- 
 sonal religion, which may be of not less value in the 
 cause of truth than the more deliberate and learned in- 
 structions of a theological chair, and which may assist 
 those who are preparing for the work of the ministry 
 in meeting the actual difficulties which they are to en- 
 counter in the living world. (d) I may observe farther 
 that these Lectures are designed and expected, if I un- 
 derstand the purpose of the founder and of the direct- 
 ors of the seminary in making the arrangements for 
 their delivery, to be less studied, elaborate, scientific, 
 and philosophical than those which are delivered in 
 the regular course of instruction in the seminary, and 
 which are especially prepared for students of theology 
 as such. It is the purpose in the “ Foundation” to form 
 a new connecting link between the seminary and the 
 churches, to impart instruction here which will not 
 only benefit those who are hereafter to be the guides 
 of the public mind, but also, in union with them, to do 
 something to diffuse just views on these subjects in the 
 community, and to aid those who are at present act- 
 ing their parts in the world, as well as those who shall 
 be the actors in the next generation. (e) And, once 
 more, I may observe that neither my friend who occu- 
 pies that chair nor myself will so exhaust the subject as 
 to leave nothing for our successors. In our own place 
 and generation we shall each find enough to do; in 
 their generation, those who come after us will find that 
 there is an ample field for all their talents in the work 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 7 
 
 to be done in their time. The Christian “ apologists” 
 of the early centuries, the opposers of Celsus, Porphyry, 
 and Julian, had enough to do in their day; Grotius, 
 Leland, and Clarke had enough to do in theirs ; Butler, 
 Lardner, Paley, and Chalmers in theirs; in our day a 
 new field, demanding new powers and new arguments 
 in answering new objections, is opened to us, and in 
 time to come, until the period when Christianity shall 
 triumph over all the earth, the enemies of Christianity 
 will be careful to give, each in their age, enough for the 
 public defenders of Christianity to do.. We, in our age, 
 have a work to do; those who come after us will have 
 a work to do in theirs. 
 
 As introductory to the course which I propose to de- 
 liver, and as an argument on the general subject, it 
 seems proper to consider the capabilities of the human 
 mind in reference to the general subject to be consider- 
 ed. If man is capable himself of originating a system 
 of religion that will be all that is needed to guide him 
 in the duties of life, to sustain him in its trials, and to 
 prepare him for the future world, that fact would, of 
 course, prove a revelation to be unnecessary, and would 
 -at the same time prove that all pretended revelations 
 are false, since it can not be supposed that God would 
 give by miracle a special revelation when he had al- 
 ready furnished, in another mode, all that is needful for 
 man, or that there would.be éco methods of communi- 
 cating the divine will on the same subject. On other 
 subjects than religion this principle is every where ob- 
 served. God does not give special revelations on those 
 subjects which are quite within the range of the hu- 
 man powers, and where there may be a healthful exer- 
 cise of those powers in ascertaining what is true and 
 
18 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 what is good. If, for the sake of example, it be admit- 
 ted that God_ specially instructed Adam in regard to 
 the appropriate names of the beasts of the field and the 
 fowls of the air (Gen., ii, 19), or that he, with his own 
 hands, made for Adam and Eve “coats of skins and 
 clothed them” (Gen., iii, 21), or that he taught Noah 
 how to construct the ark, or that he endowed Bezaleel 
 and Aholiab with special wisdom in building the tab- 
 ernacle, “to devise cunning works, to work in gold, and 
 silver, and brass” (Ex., xxxi., 3-6), yet it is certain that 
 this is not the ordinary method in which he endows 
 men for the useful or the ornamental arts of life, nor is 
 this the method on which this subject is referred to in 
 the Bible. The principle every where assumed in the 
 Bible, and a principle on which undeniably the whole 
 Bible is formed, whether that book is a revelation or 
 not, is that, where men have ample powers to accom- 
 plish what is needful for themselves, there is no special 
 instruction given by revelation. No book is more des- 
 titute of information on the common arts of life, on ag- 
 riculture, music, and the sciences, on political economy 
 and the forms of government, on the arts of raising 
 grain, of working metals, of mining, or of cooking food, 
 on the structure of ships, wagons, roads, or canals, than 
 the Bible. All these are left to the invention of men, 
 to be wrought out in the proper employment of their 
 own powers, with the presumption that man is compe- 
 tent to this; that he needs no special instruction, and 
 that his own good will be best promoted by the exer- 
 cise of his own powers on these subjects. 
 
 The principle is, that the Bible does not attempt to 
 give knowledge on subjects which men may find out 
 themselves. Agriculture, grafting, planting, architect- 
 ure, fishing, ploughs, hammers, harrows, machinery, — 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 19 
 
 printing, railroads, steam, the telegraph—all these in 
 due time; all by the skill of man. Man is competent ta 
 these things. There is no need of a revelation. The 
 world, in its infancy, was not prepared for these things, 
 and a revelation in regard to them would not have 
 been understood. It was better to raise up men from 
 time to time who would strike out great inventions 
 when the world needed them than to communicate the 
 knowledge by revelation; it was better that the hu- 
 man intellect should be sharpened and disciplined by 
 these discoveries; it was better that men should be 
 stimulated by the hope of useful inventions ; and it was 
 better that the knowledge of them should be brought 
 on the stage when they would fit into human society, 
 than to anticipate all, and render the human powers 
 flaccid and useless by a reveJation anticipating these 
 things. , 
 
 If religion is of the same nature as this; if man is 
 equally competent to solve the great questions of relig- 
 ion that pertain to him, then it is plain that religion 
 would have been left in this manner, and that a revela- 
 tion being unnecessary, none would have been given, 
 and consequently that all pretended revelations are 
 false. The enemies of the Bible, therefore, are pursuing 
 a legitimate line of thought in endeavoring to show 
 that man has all the powers necessary to ascertain what 
 is needful to be known of God, and consequently that 
 the Bible and all other pretended revelations are 
 false. 
 
 In considering now the particular subject before us 
 —the limitations of the human mind on the subject of 
 religion—it will be proper to direct your attention first 
 to the limitations on the subject from the nature of the 
 human mind itself, and then the illustrations which 
 
 
 
20 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 have been furnished by the results of the experiments 
 which have been made. 
 
 The particular thoughts necessary to be presented 
 under the first of these topics—the limitations on the 
 subject from the nature of the mind itself—are the fol- 
 lowing: those limitations in the faculties of the mind 
 in respect to the processes of reasoning ; the limitations 
 in the power of intuition; and the limitations in the 
 instruments which man employs in his discoveries, or in 
 enlarging the scope of his natural vision. 
 
 (1.) The powers of mind— created mind—mind as 
 found in man—seem vast, are vast. It is not necessary 
 for us, in exalting revelation, or in showing the necessi- 
 ty of revelation, to disparage or underrate those powers. 
 The developments of mind in the ordinary processes of 
 society, and in the discoveries which men have made in 
 the sciences, lifting the whole race to a higher level, 
 have been amazing. This is especially so when God, 
 departing from the ordinary course of things, creates a 
 great intellect as he originally created great mount- 
 ains, or rocks, or oceans, or as he creates great worlds 
 as illustrations of what he can do; as showing how he 
 might have made the race; as showing, perhaps, how 
 he does make other races; as furnishing a higher il- 
 lustration than ordinary of what he himself 1s, lifting 
 man, as by a sudden elevation, toward himself. Thus, 
 in the upheavings of the lands in the old geological 
 periods, in general the lands upheaved were low plains 
 or elevated plateaus on a level, or gentle eminences 
 diversifying the landscape, or here and there loftier 
 mountains—the ranges of the Andes, the Alleghanies, 
 the Apennines, the Alps, while at great intervals there 
 stands the lofty Dhavalagiri, the Chimborazo, the So- 
 rata of Nevada, and Mont Blanc, rising far into loftier 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 21 
 
 atmospheres, as a few men, like Newton, stand far 
 above the ordinary reiee igals of the race. 
 
 There are men—a few men—of such capacity that 
 they seem to approach almost all subjects with equal 
 -.ease; men who have by intuition, as Pascal had, what 
 other men secure by slow processes and by long-con- 
 tinued trial; who begin where other men leave off; 
 “many-sided” men, to whom all subjects appear equal- 
 ly easy, and with whom it seems to be a mere matter. 
 of will and choice what particular department they 
 shall pursue to make themselves immortal. 
 
 But, while this appears to be so, the range of subjects 
 on which any man, however richly endowed, may dis- 
 tinguish and immortalize himself, is very limited, and is 
 confined within very narrow and very carefully-defined 
 boundaries. There is, and there has been, no“ universal 
 genius.” There is, and there has been, no man whose 
 capacities are equally adapted to all the subjects of 
 science and art, of poetry, rhetoric, and eloquence ; of 
 war, of statesmanship, of invention, and of practical 
 life, in which they might equally acquire distinction. 
 Society, indeed, required in its adjustments that within 
 a limited range the powers of a man might be adapted 
 —perhaps equally adapted—to any one of a number of 
 pursuits; that in any one of them within that range he 
 might be successful or might excel. This was neces- 
 sary, in order that at any one time there might be tal- 
 ent enough on the earth for all the necessary objects of 
 _life, and that there might be, within a reasonable range, 
 the liberty of a choice—a concession to human freedom 
 and responsibility. But the range7s a limited one, and 
 within that a man must make his choice. He must be 
 a farmer, 07 a seaman, 07 4 mechanic, 07 a musician, 07" a 
 poet, o7 a merchant, ov a philosopher, o7 an artist; he 
 
23 : LECTURES ON THE 
 
 can not be-all. Between perhaps four or five of these 
 he must*»make his choice, and within that range he 
 must determine how “zs life is to be spent. It is rare 
 that a man is distinguished in more than one of these 
 things... Michael Angelo was, indeed, distinguished, 
 perhaps equally, as a painter, sculptor, and architect ;* 
 Shakspeare was equally distinguished in comedy, in 
 farce, and in tragedy; and there is now one living man 
 among us—a ‘foreignert—who, it is said, has already, 
 in four separate and distinct departments of science, 
 achieved in each a reputation, a like distinction in any 
 one of which would have placed him at the head of 
 that particular science. This “ play” or this: variety of 
 endowment is given to men not only that they may 
 have a choice, but that there may be at any one time 
 on’ the earth talent enough for all that talent is to do 
 in that one age. 
 
 Again, there is a necessary limitation in regard to 
 the attainments which men may make, as compared 
 with what remains that is as yet unknown. We all 
 remember the remark of Newton, “child-like sage ;”{ 
 
 * This idea is expressed on his tomb in the church of Santa 
 Croce, in Florence. Beneath the monument there are three statues, 
 
 personifying Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, and at the base of 
 the monument an inscription, of which the following is a part: 
 ‘¢ Michaeli Angelo Bonaratio 
 E vetusta Simoniorum Familia. 
 Sculptori, Pictori et Architecto 
 Fama omnibus notissimo.” 
 +. Agassiz. 
 t ‘‘I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself 
 I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and 
 diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a 
 prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all 
 undiscovered before me.”—Brewster’s Life of Newton, pp. 300, 301, 
 Harper’s ed., 1832. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. : 23 
 
 and we remember, too, the sarcastic remarks of Pope 
 on the discoveries of Newton himself, showing how lit- 
 tle, after all the discoveries made by him, as compared 
 with the knowledge of higher intelligences, may be, 
 and what, in this respect, is the general condition of 
 mankind on the subject of knowledge: 
 *¢ Superior beings, when of late they saw 
 A mortal man unfold all nature’s law, 
 
 Admired such wisdom in an earthly shape, 
 And showed a Newton as we show an ape.” 
 
 After all, how limited is the range of human thought 
 and knowledge! We are to remember that ordinarily 
 man is compelled to spend one third of the length of 
 life in acquiring what has been known before, and put- 
 ting himself in a position to begin his own investiga- 
 tions, as if one preparing to explore distant ‘continents 
 should be compelled to spend one third of his days in 
 reaching it; we are to remember that any man is liable 
 to be cut down at any moment, his career of brilliant 
 discovery but just begun; we are to remember that 
 the faculties of man begin soon to decay, and that the 
 imbecility of age, if life is lengthened out, is almost like 
 the imbecility of childhood—life ending as it began; 
 we are to remember that the active average life of man, 
 in which he must do all that he is to do, is but little 
 over twenty years; and we are to remember, also, that 
 the range of his inquiries is limited by the fact that 
 they must be within the scope of his reason, where he 
 may have instruments to aid him, and where he may 
 haye the light of other ages to guide him. But what 
 if there are boundless fields wholly beyond that range ; 
 if there are worlds which he can not penetrate; if 
 there is an infinity in God in reference to which he 
 has no faculties or powers to investigate or understand 
 
24 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 it? The question has been well asked,“ Why may 
 there not be a whole sphere of existence, embracing 
 the relations and the communion between God and 
 man, with which natural science has no concern, and in 
 which its dictation is as impertinent as the dictation 
 of theology in physics? Why may not spiritual experi- 
 ence, and an approach to the divine in character, be a 
 necessary means of insight into the things of the spirit- 
 ual world, as scientific instruments and scientific skill 
 are necessary means of insight into the things of the 
 material world ?”* 
 
 _ And, after all, what does man know of the universe ? 
 How little does he know of his own little world, its his- 
 tory, its origin, in component parts? What does he 
 iknow of matter, of oxygen, of galvanism, of life? And 
 what does he know of Jupiter, of Saturn, of Mars, of 
 Sirius, of the moon, of the sun, of the inhabitants that 
 dwell there, and of their history ? How few are the 
 words necessary to be employed in telling ad/ that he 
 knows of those worlds? And what does he know of 
 the millions of worlds in that nebula to which our own 
 solar system belongs, or of the countless millions that 
 constitute the other “ islands” that float in the immens- 
 ity of space? 
 
 (2.) The next thought in relation to the point now 
 before us pertains to the subject of éntwition—to the 
 question whether, though his range be limited in re- 
 gard to subjects in which he is required to use énstru- 
 ments and calculation, man may not be endowed with 
 a higher power, that shall bring directly within the 
 sphere of his vision the great spiritual truths which it 
 is necessary for him to understand. 
 
 * Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, Professor 
 cf Modern History in Oxford, p. 85. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 25 
 
 This inquiry would open the whole subject of trans- 
 cendentalism, and would embrace a range of thought 
 which could not be entered on now. The only point 
 material to the inquiries in this course of Lectures 
 would be, whether there is such a power in man that 
 the great truths of Christianity, as disclosed in the 
 Bible, could have been the result of such an endow- 
 ment, and could be traced to such a source. 
 
 It could hardly be necessary to argue this question 
 here, since the mere statement of the matter may seem 
 to be all that is necessary on the subject, and will, to 
 most minds, settle the question. It is obvious that a 
 claim of this kind mst be a claim, in some sense, to an 
 equality with God, since it implies a power that prop- 
 erly belongs to God, of looking into the whole nature 
 of things, and since it implies a power. also equal to 
 that which must be supposed to pertain to God, if 
 there be a God, of determining what is needful for man 
 to know on the highest subjects, of determining what 
 God would communicate if he made a revelation, and 
 of declaring what God would be, and should be, and, 
 therefore, of what he is. Obviously no one could do 
 this who was not himself divine. 
 
 Still, as the claim is set up, and as men, on the ground 
 of this, not only presume to judge of a revelation when 
 one is proposed, and to determine whether it is worthy 
 of credit alike in its general character and in the de- 
 tails, and as they claim the power, on the same grounds, 
 to determine that a revelation is not necessary to man, 
 and that, therefore, all pretensions to “ book-revelation” 
 are to be rejected at once, it may not be improper to 
 make a few remarks on the subject. 
 
 (a) There can be no, doubt that, to a certain extent, 
 there zs this power in man of looking directly at truth, 
 
 B 
 
26 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 or, to make the assertion larger, that it is of the nature 
 of mind, as such, to do this—the mind of God, and of 
 all minds made in his image. We can not conceive of 
 God without this power; we can not doubt that he 
 could endow created mind with this power as well as 
 with any other power, making it thus in his own image, 
 or so that it would represent or express himself; and 
 we can not limit him in regard to the extent to which 
 he could endow mind in this as well as in any other re- 
 spect, except that it can not equal his own infinity. 
 There must be a limit, or all beings thus made would be 
 gods, and instead of one God, the universe would be full 
 of gods. 
 
 But that God has this power of looking at once into 
 truth, of understanding its nature, of separating it from 
 error, without the slow process of reasoning, there can 
 be no doubt. 
 
 (6) That man has this power, to a certain extent, is 
 apparent from our own consciousness. The belief in 
 mathematical axioms or first principles is founded on 
 this. We look at the truth at once without any medi- 
 um or intermediate idea. We could not be assisted in 
 this by any intermediate idea. We could not be made 
 to doubt the truth by any objections that could be 
 urged. That the whole is greater than a part, that the 
 whole is equal to the sum of all the parts, that if equals 
 are added to equals the sum will be equal, are points 
 which do not and can not depend on reasoning, nor 
 could we reason at all if there were not such points on 
 which all men agree. 
 
 (c) But it is obvious that the range of this must be 
 very different in different minds; nor, as has been al- 
 ready intimated, is it possible where, short of infinity, 
 the limit might be made. To the mass of men the num- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. He 
 
 ber of such truths is not large. To some minds truths, 
 which to others could be learned only as the result of 
 labored reasoning, are a mere matter of intuition. To 
 most minds, for example, in studying Euclid, after a 
 _very few statements of that kind which are laid down 
 as maxims or axioms which all men will assent to, ev- 
 ery successive proposition is believed only as the result 
 of clear demonstration in some labored process of rea- 
 soning; to Newton all these propositions were as ax- 
 ioms not demanding any proof, and read as axioms are; 
 to Pascal they led on one another by a power of their 
 own, which he represented, when a boy, on the floor by 
 Thies and bars of his own construction. 
 
 (2) As pertaining to religion, as in other matters, 
 this subject presents itself in two forms: the one is 
 that of originating truth, or declaring what truth 7s ; 
 tho other is that, more common, of judging of truth 
 when it is presented to the mind; of determining wheth- 
 er it 7s truth, and of rejecting it if it does not commend. 
 itself to the mind as true.* The latter is Rationalism, 
 the former is the claim of Deism; both are comprised 
 in the term Transcendentalism. ‘Much of this is found 
 in Plato, more of it in Kant; much in all Transcendent- 
 alists and Rationalists; more by most men in judging 
 in regard to the evidences of a revealed religion than 
 they are aware of; much is properly exercised in exam- 
 ining the claims of any religion, true or false. There are 
 
 * Thus Wegscheider represents the claims of Rationalists: ‘* They 
 claim for sound reason the power of deciding upon any religious 
 doctrine whatsoever, derived from a supposed supernatural revela- 
 tion, and of determining the argument for it, to be made out only ac- 
 cording to the laws of thought and action implanted in reason.”— 
 Inst. Theol., § 10, quoted in Mansel, Limits of Religious Thought, p. 
 234, 235. 
 
28 : LECTURES ON THE 
 
 certain convictions engraven on the human mind in re- 
 gard to truth to which I shall have occasion to advert 
 in another part of this course,* which must be met by 
 a pretended revelation, or it can not be received. 
 There is much in man that contributes to the reception 
 of a system of truth in a revelation when it 1s proposed, 
 and that gives it a power over the soul which nothing 
 can destroy. It is in a large degree owing to this that 
 a true religion makes its way in the world, and in a 
 large degree also it is owing to this that the world is 
 kept from being imposed on by the pretensions of a 
 false religion. 
 
 (ec) When we ask, however, whether this is sufficient 
 —whether this is all that man needs, we are met by 
 such answers as the following: (1.) There is no agree- 
 ment among those who rely on this as to what 7s the 
 true system. From Plato downward to Kant and 
 Comte, men have speculated on this point, and in re- 
 gard to what is claimed under this system—the “ true,” 
 the “absolute,” the “infinite’—as to what God is, what 
 man is, or what is the moral system of the universe, it 
 is impossible to refer to any system on which men have 
 speculated at all, in respect to which there is a greater 
 variety of opinion, or in which more that is incompre- 
 hensible has been proposed to the faith of mankind. It 
 would be very easy for any one to make extracts from 
 Hegel and from Kant so far above common apprehen- 
 hension, so mystical, so difficult of interpretation, so 
 destitute of apparent meaning, as to turn the whole 
 matter into ridicule if it should be held seriously that 
 this was to be the faith and the guide of mankind at 
 large. Besides, who is to decide which is the true sys- 
 tem ?_ Or who, holding one system on this theory, has 
 
 * In the [Xth Lecture. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 29 
 
 a right to call in question the truth of the system pre- 
 ferred by another? (2.) But it is to be observed far- 
 ther that there are—there must be, truths lying beyond 
 the range of intuition—of man’s powers. Only the 
 infinite can look into and comprehend the infinite. 
 There were profound depths in the minds of Newton 
 and Bacon which a child of four years of age could not 
 fathom — which no man could fathom who had not a 
 mind like theirs. It is a matter of the plainest common 
 sense likewise that there must be profound depths in 
 the mind of God which none can fathom who 1s not the 
 equal of God. Can the arms of a child wield and govy- 
 ern the world? Can a quart-measure take in that 
 which would fill the great “tun” at Heidelberg ? 
 Could Loch Katrine contain all the waters of the 
 ocean? There must be truths respecting God which 
 man can not know unless God shall reveal them. 
 There are things in the mind of the stranger that we 
 casually meet, though on the same level with ourselves, 
 which we can not know unless he shall choose to dis- 
 close them. He has the power of hiding them forever 
 from our knowledge. 
 
 (3.) There is one other AHOGAr on this point of the 
 subject. I have adverted to the limitations of the fac- 
 ulties of the mind in the ordinary processes of reason- 
 ing and in the power of intuition. I shall now advert 
 to the defect in the limitation of the instruments which 
 man employs in his discoveries, or in enlarging his 
 scope of natural vision. The point now to be made is, 
 that the means or instruments which man employs so 
 successfully in enlarging the range of his natural pow- 
 ers do not disclose or reveal God. Those means or in- 
 struments are, in the first place, limited to their own 
 particular range of discovery, and can be employed 
 
30 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 only in that direction, or can not be employed to aid 
 man in more than one particular line. ‘The telescope 
 discloses wonders, but it can not be employed by the 
 chemist, the metallurgist, the engineer. The tests of 
 the chemist and his blow-pipe accomplish wonders, but 
 they can not be employed in the purposes of astronomy. 
 The electrical machine accomplishes wonders, but .it 
 can not be employed to determine the distance and 
 magnitude. of the planets, the height of the atmosphere, 
 or the cause of the tides. Least of all can any of these 
 be employed on moral subjects. They can not determ- 
 ine the great questions about God, and the nature of 
 the human soul, and the destiny of man in distant 
 worlds. The astronomer directs his glass to the blue 
 fields of ether, and brings suns and systems to view 
 before unknown to man, but he does not see God on 
 his throne. The electrical machine may be turned for- 
 ever, throwing out a continuous stream of light, but it 
 does not reveal God, or cast a ray of light on the des- 
 tinies of the human soul. All these are limited to their 
 proper objects—all come short of revealing God. 
 
 Such, then, are some of the limitations of the human 
 mind as suggested by the nature of the case. 
 
 We turn to. the next general point proposed to be 
 considered, to the illustrations which have been fur- 
 nished on the subject by the experiment which the 
 world has been making to answer the great questions 
 which it must be the province of a revelation to an- 
 swer, if a revelation 1s given to man. 
 
 This need not detain us long, though the subject is 
 one that might be pursued to much greater length than 
 the limits of these Lectures will allow. 
 
 The general remark to be illustrated is, that the trial 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 31 
 
 has been made, and so made that it is not necessary 
 that it should be repeated. 
 
 If a revelation was to be given to man; if it be as- 
 sumed for a moment that such was the divine purpose, 
 it would seem to be not an unreasonable expectation 
 that man himself should be allowed to make the exper- 
 iment to see whether he could do without one; that is, 
 whether such a revelation was necessary for man. This 
 may be presumed to be reasonable, because (a) it would 
 settle a great question forever, disposing man to re- 
 ceive and believe the revelation if he himself failed, and 
 (0) it would be in accordance with the ordinary meth- 
 od of the divine arrangements in other things. What- 
 ever man can do, it is, as before remarked, left for him 
 to do; and whatever God may do for man, it is com- 
 monly preceded by the effort of man himself in that 
 direction. Great discoveries in science and art are thus 
 left for man to accomplish, if they are within his pow- 
 er; if the ordinary powers of man are insufficient for 
 them, God creates and brings upon the stage some 
 great mind, endowed in that direction beyond the or- 
 dinary powers of man, like Bacon or Newton, Watt or 
 Fulton, Whitney or Morse, elevated: above common 
 men on these subjects as Isaiah or David were above 
 ordinary men in the knowledge of spiritual things. 
 
 The trial on this subject, as it has actually occurred 
 in the world, has related to two points: to the powers 
 of man in relation to religion in general, and to those 
 powers in relation to a “ book-revelation.” _ 
 
 In regard to the former of these, the powers of man 
 in relation to religion in general, I remark, first, that 
 the time allowed to man for the experiment was suffi- 
 ciently long to permit the experiment to be fairly 
 made. If we assume now that Christianity had its 
 
5 PA af LECTURES ON THE 
 
 origin at the time commonly ‘ascribed to it, about 
 eighteen hundred years ago, then, according to the 
 common chronology, there were four thousand years 
 previous in which the experiment was to be made. 
 According to Chevalier Bunsen, Lepsius, and others 
 of that school, there were not far from twenty thou- 
 sand years from the time when man appeared upon 
 the earth. It could not be denied that, taking either 
 position, the time was sufficiently long to admit of a 
 fair trial on this subject in regard to the capability of 
 the human powers to devise a system of religion; for, 
 if man could not devise a system that would meet his 
 wants in that time, it might be reasonably doubted 
 whether he could do it at all. It may be added also, 
 that, on the supposition that vast and eternal interests 
 were connected in any way with embracing a érue sys- 
 tem of religion, it might be difficult to reconcile it with 
 any just notions of benevolence in the Deity if the 
 time had been longer, and if those interests were ex- 
 posed to farther peril. Indeed, one great difficulty now 
 to be explained, on the supposition that the revelation 
 of a plan of salvation was delayed so long,is to recon- 
 cile that fact with the benevolence of God, leaving, 
 during that long period, the eternal welfare of so many 
 millions of souls to be jeoparded by the delay in giving 
 a revelation to man: a difficulty which has its parallel, 
 however, in the fact that so many millions were suffer- 
 ed to die of pestilence, of the plague, and of fever, be- 
 fore the healing art was in any way perfected, and 
 while the substances constituting the materia medica 
 of the world were actually in existence, but were as 
 yet undiscovered by man. 
 
 The next thing to be observed in regard to this trial 
 is, that the character of the mind mainly employed in 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 30 
 
 the experiment was all, that could be demanded zn 
 such an experiment. If we were asked which of the 
 classes of mind that have existed on the earth would 
 be best adapted for original investigations of this na- 
 ture, we should say that the qualifications would be 
 most likely to be found in the Hindu mind, the Arabic, 
 the Greek, and the Teutonic. These, indeed, in some re- 
 spects run into.each other, and may perhaps be regard- 
 ed as of the same type or class; but of all the intellects 
 that God has made in the world, a great question of 
 this kind could be more safely intrusted to these classes 
 of mind than to any other. 
 
 Now, laying out of view at present all reference to 
 the others, it may be said that of these classes of mind 
 the Greek was better adapted to this inquiry than 
 either of those which have been referred to. That 
 mind was, in some respects, the best that the world has 
 seen—as if God had created it for the very purpose of 
 settling forever this great inquiry. For acuteness, for 
 depth, for accurate analysis, for subtle philosophical dis- 
 tinctions, for fervor, and for enthusiasm—being equally 
 fitted for eloquence, for poetry, and for philosophy— 
 that mind stands pre-eminent among all that God has 
 made. The Greeks had a language, too, fitted, above 
 all others spoken among men, for such inquiries—a lan- 
 guage in which the highest conceptions of philosophy 
 and religion could be better expressed than in any oth- 
 er, and in which the nicest shades of thought could be 
 perpetuated—the language, in fact, adopted by the au- 
 thors of the New Testament under, as we believe, the 
 guidance of the Holy Ghost—-selected from all the lan- 
 guages of the world as best adapted to express the 
 great ideas of the Christian Revelation. 
 
 . The Greeks, too, gave themselves to this inquiry, 
 B2 
 
34 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 fully impressed with its importance and its vastness, 
 as if under the impression themselves that the great 
 problem had been intrusted to their hands. They 
 were not insensible to the magnitude of the questions 
 at issue, and alike in their mental acuteness, in their 
 language, and in their zeal, they have shown that the 
 great problem was well intrusted to their hands. If 
 the question were now asked, 'To what people of all 
 lands and ages such a question could be best submit- 
 ted? there would be but one answer—that the question 
 whether man could originate or discover a religion that 
 would be fitted for human wants in all ages could be 
 most appropriately and safely lodged with the Greeks. 
 
 The rest of the trial is now before the world. The 
 
 trial is complete. It is not to be repeated. Whether 
 Christianity is true or false, it may be assumed now 
 that a more hopeful trial could not now be entered on; 
 it may be assumed that if there is no revelation given 
 to man, then man, on the subject of religion, must give 
 himself up to despair. 
 - There zs no system of religion that man has devised 
 that meets the wants of the race; there is none, unless 
 it be Christianity, that the race in its progress will care 
 to perpetuate. None of the religions which man orig- 
 inated before the Christian era, if we except Hinduism 
 and Buddhism, have now an existence in the world, 
 and it will not be pretended by those who reject the 
 Christian revelation that these meet the wants of men, 
 or that they can be perpetuated in the advancing pe- 
 riods of the world. 
 
 All the others have perished—perished with the em- 
 pires where they were originated; perished with the 
 priesthood to which they gave power; perished with 
 the temples and altars which time has overthrown— 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 35 
 
 perished never to be revived. The temples of Baalbee 
 and Karnak will not be rebuilt; the altars of Mexico 
 will not be reconstructed; the Parthenon will not be 
 repaired; and the Pantheon will not again welcome 
 the gods of all nations. These ancient systems of re- 
 ligion were dying out when Christianity appeared, and 
 would have died at any rate. It is a fine remark of 
 Augustine that “Christ appeared to the men of a de- 
 crepit, dying world, that while all around them was 
 fading, they might receive through him a new, youth- 
 ful life.’* It was not in the power of Julian, with all 
 the influence and wealth of the world at his command, 
 to quicken the old Roman Paganism into life again; it 
 was the task of Mr. Gibbon to record the dying out of 
 the old system, whatever might be his record in regard 
 to the new. 
 
 In particular, it pertains to my argument to remark 
 that the system of the Greeks, the result of the highest 
 wisdom of man, has departed forever. That religion 
 has ceased altogether; the “elegant mythology” of 
 the Greeks, as Mr. Gibbon calls it, has passed away. 
 There is not a vestige of it remaining. There is not 
 now an altar, even in Athens, where Paul saw so many, 
 where a heathen god is worshiped; there is no one 
 there erected to an “unknown God.” Every altar -that 
 stood there in the time of Paul has long since been 
 overthrown, not to be rebuilt; the splendid temples on 
 which his eye rested when he stood on Mars’ Hill 
 have disappeared. Even the Parthenon is in ruins, 
 and there has not been vitality enough to perpetuate 
 it in its beauty as a work of art; as a structure for the 
 worship of Minerva it is to be entered no more forever. 
 
 There was nothing in the ancient religion of Greece, 
 
 * Neander, Church History, i., 77. | 
 
36 LECTURES ON THE 
 f 
 
 or in her philosophy as bearing on religion, that the 
 world could lay hold of as worth perpetuating, and the 
 religion of Greece, the highest result of human wisdom 
 —of the speculation of the profoundest and acutest in- 
 tellect of the world—has departed; the ruin of the an- 
 cient religion is universal. Not more entire is the ruin 
 of kingdoms, dynasties, empires—of thrones and pal- 
 aces—than is the ruin of temples and altars. All lie in 
 promiscuous ruin: Karnak, Baalbec, Birs Nimroud in 
 Babylon; the splendid temples in Athens and in Cor- 
 inth; the temples of Jupiter, and Janus, and Apollo—all 
 in Rome save the little temple of Ceres and the Pan- 
 theon—all are in ruin. No part of the world is now 
 influenced in the slightest degree by the Egyptian, the 
 Persian, the Assyrian, the Roman, the Greek religions, 
 by the religion of the Druids, or of any of the old Teu- 
 tonic or Scythian races. 
 
 It would be but carrying out this view to remark 
 that the world, as left to itself, has made no advances 
 since. Hinduism indeed survives, but it has made no 
 progress, and it has not commended itself to man as 
 the religion which he needs as civilization advances. 
 Buddhism survives, but it also has made no progress in 
 character, or in adapting itself to the wants of man, 
 since it started from India and spread over China. 
 Nor have men who have rejected Christianity, and re- 
 nounced the ancient Paganism, although they have 
 shown that they are abreast or ahead of the world in 
 other things, devised a system of religion that would 
 meet the wants of man, or that would commend itself 
 to mankind as worthy to be perpetuated. Mr. Hume 
 and Mr. Gibbon proposed no new system; Shaftesbury, 
 Bolingbroke, Hobbes of Malmesbury, Morgan, proposed 
 none; the system of Lord Herbert commended itself 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. oF 
 
 to but few minds in his own age, and now commends 
 itself to none. The world has not shown that it is 
 satisfied with the views of Hegel and Kant, of Strauss, 
 of Renan, and of Comte. But my present purpose does 
 not require me to pursue this argument. 
 
 It remains only to make a remark on the other thing 
 suggested in regard to the limitations of the human 
 mind—that limitation as illustrated in the attempt to 
 give to man a “ book-revelation”—to accomplish what 
 the Bible claims to accomplish. The inquiry is, what, 
 in the failure of reasoning on the subject, has man pro- 
 duced claiming to be a “ book-revelation” from God, or 
 to supply what reason has not shown itself able to sup- 
 ply. ; 
 
 It must be assumed here that those efforts are the 
 result of the unaided human intellect, for a contrary 
 supposition, or an admission that they are inspired, 
 would not, of course, bear on my argument. For the 
 sake of argument, at least, it may be admitted that they 
 are the result of unaided human genius. The question 
 is, whether they meet the wants of man; whether they 
 supply what Grecian wisdom could not supply ; wheth- 
 er men will be likely to attempt any thing more with 
 any prospect of success. 
 
 The powers of the human mind have exhausted them- 
 selves in regard to a “ book-revelation” in the Sibylline 
 oracles, the Zendavesta, the Vedas and Shasters, the 
 Koran, and the Book of Mormon—chiefly in the Koran. 
 
 It can not be denied that in some of these there is 
 vast power; it can not, with reason, be supposed that 
 in respect to a pretended revelation these are to be sur- 
 passed, or that these pretended revelations are to be su- 
 perseded by those of human origin that will better meet 
 the wants, or that will have higher claims to the faith 
 
38 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 of men. Including the Bible now in the number of 
 books that claim to be a revelation from God, it may be 
 assumed that, if that is on the same level with respect 
 to its origin, the human powers have exhausted them- 
 selves, and that the question whether man can devise 
 what shall be received as a revelation from God is 
 closed forever, and that the choice of that which shall 
 guide the race is limited to these. If the Bible is of 
 divine origin it determines the matter that there is to 
 be no other, for it claims to be final on the subject, and 
 man must, therefore, embrace the Sibylline oracles, o7 
 the Zendavesta, or the Shasters, ov the Bible, or the 
 Koran, 07 the Book of Mormon, ov have no revela- 
 tion. 
 
 In respect to the question now before us, however, 
 the Bible is to be put aside, for we are inquiring into 
 the capacities of the human mind on the subject apart 
 from the Bible—from Christianity. 
 
 The question for the infidel is whether he shall em- 
 brace one of the other books referred to, or whether he 
 shall attempt to originate one of a higher order that 
 will more perfectly meet the wants of men, or wheth- 
 er he shall reject all claims of pretended revelations 
 whatever. 
 
 The remark which I am now making is, that the pow- 
 ers of the human mind have exhausted themselves in 
 these efforts, and that it is hopeless now for an impos- 
 tor to produce a “ book-revelation,” or such a pretend- 
 ed book, that shall be so far in advance of the rest of 
 the world as to meet the wants of mankind, or that 
 shall control as many millions of the human race as 
 these books do or have done, or that shall have the 
 prospect, as we believe the Bible has, of securing the 
 ultimate faith of all men. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 39 
 
 Take, for example, the best of these books—the Ko- 
 ran. What prospect is there now—what possibility— 
 that man shall originate a book claiming to have divine 
 authority, that shall control as many millions of the hu- 
 man race as that book has done, and does now? For 
 that book has formed the faith of nations. It has con- 
 trolled armies, and directed wars, and made laws, and 
 laid the foundations of empires. It has ruled for a thou- 
 sand years some of the most acute, profound, energetic, 
 active portions of mind that God has made. It controls 
 now one hundred and sixty millions of minds. How 
 many are controlled by Lord Herbert, by Bolingbroke, 
 by Kant, by Hegel, by Comte? We may not be able, 
 indeed, to read that book, either in the original language 
 or in a translation, but we can not but respect it. The 
 late Mr. Everett said that Ae had often attempted to 
 read it, but had been unable to accomplish it; and all 
 of us who attempt it, after a few pages or chapters, co- 
 incide with his remark, and lay down the book. But it 
 as read, and read as the Bible is, by millions too, as giv- 
 ing them law, and forming their faith, and we can not 
 but respect it. We can not but feel an interest in any 
 book that has power to hold one hundred and sixty 
 millions of the human race in subjection, and to mould 
 the institutions and laws of so large a portion of man- 
 kind. "There is more to interest us in that fact than 
 there was in the power of Alexander, who subdued the 
 world by arms; or in the power of the Autocrat of 
 Russia, who rules by hereditary right ; or in the power 
 of Napoleon, who held nations in subjection by a most 
 potent and active will. For, in such cases, there is living 
 power, and there are vast armies, and there are frown- 
 ing bulwarks, and there are the means of crushing and 
 destroying men. But the dominion of the Koran 1s Tur 
 
40 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 DOMINION OF A BOOK—a silent, still, speechless thing 
 that has no will, no armies, no living energies, no chain- 
 shot, no cannon, and yet it exerts a power which the- 
 monarch and the conqueror never wields. It lives, too, 
 when monarchs and conquerors die. It rules advancing 
 generations, and subdues their wills too. It moulds 
 their opinions, leads them to temples of worship, and 
 restrains their passions with a power which monarchs 
 never wielded. It guides them in life, and is the last 
 book which they consult, or call to remembrance, on 
 the bed of death; and I think it will not be denied that 
 I am justified in the conclusion that the powers of the 
 human mind have exhausted themselves in that di- 
 rection; that no man—not even Comte—can hope that 
 it is within the range of his powers to originate a sys- 
 tem that shall exert an influence on mankind as wide 
 as the Koran, or that, displacing the Bible, and the 
 Koran, and the Zendavesta, and the Shasters, shall dis- 
 close a system of religion that shall mect the wants of 
 all mankind. 
 
 I infer from these remarks that the powers of man 
 have exhausted themselves in this direction; that the 
 human mind is limited on the subject of religion; that 
 there are boundaries which it does not pass; that, if 
 man is to have light to guide him to his Maker, it 
 must be found, not in the recorded results of human 
 thinking hitherto; not in any intuitions to which the 
 human powers may rise; not in any books of human 
 devising claiming to be a revelation, but in a “ book- 
 revelation” that comes direct from God—not in the Sib- 
 ylline oracles, or in the Zendavesta, or in the Shasters, 
 or in the Koran, but in the Bible. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 4] 
 
 LECTURE IL. 
 HISTORICAL EVIDENCE AS AFFECTED BY TIME, 
 
 Historica criticism is comparatively a modern sci- 
 ence. For the introduction and establishment of this 
 science we are undoubtedly mainly indebted to the 
 Germans, who, to whatever extent they may have car- 
 ried it into Rationalism in theology, or skepticism in 
 the classics, have unquestionably laid down, among 
 much that is false, the true principles that are to be 
 applied to the writings of the ancients. 
 
 Niebuhr, in the Preface to his History of Rome, says: 
 “The History of Rome was treated, during the first two 
 centuries after the revival of letters, with the same pros- 
 tration of the understanding and judgment to the writ- 
 ten letter that had been handed down, and the same 
 fearfulness of going beyond it, which prevailed in all 
 the other branches of knowledge. If any one had pre- 
 tended to examine into the credibility of the ancient 
 writers, and the value of their testimony, an outcry 
 would have been raised against such atrocious presump- 
 tion. The object aimed at was, in spite of every thing 
 like internal evidence, to combine what they related. 
 At the utmost, one authority was made to give way in 
 some particular instance to another; and this was done 
 as mildly as possible, and without leading to any far- 
 ther results. Here and there, indeed, a man of an inde- 
 pendent mind, like Glareanus, broke through this fence ; 
 but inevitably a sentence of condemnation was forth- 
 with pronounced against him. Besides, the persons 
 
492 LECTURES ON TUE 
 
 who did so were not the most learned; and these bold 
 attempts were not carried with consistency throughout. 
 In this department, as in others, men of splendid abili- — 
 ties and the most popiids learning conformed to the 
 narrow spirit of their age.’ 
 
 Wolff had, indeed, applied a et of unsparing criti- 
 cism to the writings of Homer; Bentley had continued 
 the application of these principles; Glanvil, who has 
 been termed by a modern critic “the first English wri- 
 ter who had thrown skepticism into a definite form,”* 
 had applied these principles to the prevailing belief in 
 his time in sorcery and witchcraft ; Bayle carried them 
 to almost universal skepticism; Niebuhr applied them 
 to the Roman History. 
 
 Glanvil, in order to test the historical evidence in re- 
 gard to the miracles of the New Testament, proposed 
 to make the trial on the belief in witchcraft im his time, 
 as being contemporary, and as making it peculiarly easy 
 to test the credibility of the supernatural; “ for,” said 
 he, “ things remote or long past are either not believed 
 or forgotten; whereas, those being fresh and new, and 
 attended with all the circumstances of credibility, it 
 should be expected that they would have most success 
 upon the obstinacy of unbelievers.”+ 
 
 The general grounds on which this criticism is found- 
 ed are such as the following: That the witnesses for 
 ancient facts lived in a remote and uncritical age; that 
 they were not, when they lived, subjected to a cross- 
 examination; that they have long since died and can 
 not now be examined; that it was for the interest and 
 attractiveness of their story to relate the marvelous, 
 since most of their historic productions were recited in 
 public, and none were allowed to contradict them; that 
 
 * Biographie Universelle. + Lecky, Hist. of Rationalism, i., 133. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 
 
 there were few contemporary historical documents with 
 which they could be compared; that there was a love 
 of the marvelous, and a prevailing belief in the super- 
 natural, which was to be gratified; that time has ef- 
 fected changes in the public mind in most or all these 
 respects; and that now, in a more critical age, and on 
 the coolness of calm reflection, and with tests to separ- 
 ate the marvelous from the real, it is proper to apply to 
 all ancient writings the principles of criticism sug¢gest- 
 ed by the present advanced position of the world. 
 Time has made changes affecting historical testimony. 
 All is not now believed that has been believed in for- 
 mer ages—nor should it be; all is not believed that is 
 recorded—nor should it be. The world is less credu- 
 lous than it once was; it is more disposed to examine 
 what is proposed for belief; it has advantages which 
 it once had not for this; it demands evidence which it 
 did not once demand; it applies an unsparing criticism 
 to what was once accredited as undoubted truth. It 
 has learned that many false records have come down 
 to us from the past; that there have been errors in 
 transcribing ancient documents; that many of those 
 documents have been corrupted by design, if an object 
 was to be gained by it—if the glory of a nation or a 
 hero was to be exalted, if the claims of a religion were 
 to be established, if the interest of a party in the state, 
 or in philosophy, was to be promoted; and it has learn- 
 ed that many of the documents which have come down 
 to us from ancient times are forged documents; that 
 there have been myths, legends, and fables wrought into 
 history; that there have been fancied records of dynas- 
 ties and heroes stretching back an almost illimitable 
 number of years; that there have been details of unreal 
 battles, of imaginary dynasties, and of fancied wonders ; 
 
44 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 that there have been apocryphal histories and apocry- 
 phal gospels. | 
 Especially there has been a change on the whole sub- 
 ject of the supernatural. In the early ages of the world 
 the relation of a supernatural event did nothing to im- 
 pair the general credit of the history, and the record of 
 such an event was received with as little skepticism as 
 a statement in regard to the ordinary events of the 
 world. It does not appear that the statements of Livy 
 respecting the marvelous events attending the founda- 
 tion of Rome and its early history impaired the gener- 
 al credit of his history, or lessened the public faith in 
 his statements in regard to things occurring under the 
 operation of natural causes. It may be presumed, on 
 the contrary, that such statements of the marvelous 
 commended his history to a stronger credence, as being 
 in accordance with the common belief respecting the 
 foundation of empires, and as indicating the special fa- 
 vor of the gods toward the nation—a nation started on 
 a loftier career, and under better auspices, which could 
 refer to special divine interpositions in its behalf; which 
 could prove that even the gods were present when the 
 foundations of its walls and of its Capitol were laid. 
 All this has passed away. An unsparing criticism 
 has swept all those marvels from the early history of 
 Rome, and in doing this, it demands that all the records 
 of marvels in the early history of nations should be re- 
 garded as fabulous. To such an extent has the princi- 
 ple been carried, in fact, that the claim that “ miracles” 
 or marvels have occurred in any period of the history 
 of the world is to be regarded as proof that the entire 
 history, and all that is dependent on it, is false. Renan, 
 in his “ Life of Jesus” (p. 17), says of the Gospels: “ Let 
 the gospels be in part legendary: that is evident, since 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 
 
 they are full of miracles and the supernatural ;” that is, 
 the fact that “miracles” and the “supernatural” are re- 
 counted there is to be regarded as undoubted. proof 
 that they are in a great degree “legendary”—on the 
 same level with the first portion of the history of Livy, 
 or with the early records of Egypt. 
 
 So, again, In a passage apparently approved by the 
 Westminster Review* as a just principle, he says, “It 
 is an absolute rule of criticism not to admit into history 
 any narrative of miraculous incidents. This is not the 
 result of any metaphysical system; it is simply a fact 
 of observation. No such facts have ever been establish- 
 ed, and all alleged miracles resolve themselves into illu- 
 sion and imposture. All miracles that may be made 
 the subject of examination vanish away.” 
 
 The demand is now—a demand which this age is to 
 consider, for it affects every question about a revelation, 
 and is vital in its bearings on Christianity—that this 
 shall be regarded as a universal rule in history ; or, that 
 the claim that a miracle has been wrought shall at once 
 set aside all the evidences adduced in favor of the truth 
 of any historic record 
 
 To nothing have the principles of a stern historical 
 criticism been more rigorously applied than to the books 
 of the New Testament. All that has been said about 
 legends, and marvels, and interpolated manuscripts, and 
 forged documents, and unknown authorships, has been 
 said about those books. All that has been said about 
 statements being contradictory to each other, or to in- 
 dependent contemporaneous statements ; about witness- 
 es as Incompetent to give testimony, or as not cross-ex- 
 amined, or as long since dead; about the ability of a 
 more advanced age of the world to judge of a record 
 
 * Quoted in the Westminster Review, Oct., 1866. 
 
 
 
46 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 that has come down from the mists, and through the 
 mists, of the past—all this has been said of what is af- 
 firmed as fact in the New Testament. A more un- 
 sparing criticism has been employed because the events 
 referred to are of a religious nature; and a portion of 
 the scientific and historic world—a portion not small— 
 is hastening to the conclusion, as a universal canon of 
 criticism, that the fact that any pretended history re- 
 cords a “miracle” is full demonstration that the histo- 
 ry is false. 
 
 The question suggested by these criticisms is a fair 
 question; a question which men have a right to ask; a 
 question which the believer in miracles may be held to 
 answer. The value of evidence és affected by time. 
 One age may be much more competent to examine the 
 credibility of testimony than another. A subsequent 
 generation may be much better qualified to examine 
 such testimony than that in which the event was said 
 to have occurred. It may be easier to ascertain the 
 exact truth in regard to an event at a subsequent period 
 than when it occurred, as the movements and positions 
 of forces engaged in a battle can be best understood 
 and explained when the smoke of the battle has cleared 
 away. - Statements apparently contradictory may be 
 explained and reconciled; different accounts may be 
 sifted and compared, and the result of all credible tes- 
 timony may be combined in one. It is ever to be re- 
 membered that the historic statement of an event is what 
 it is reported to be by all who witnessed it, and who have 
 made a record in regard to it ; not the statement of an 
 individual. 'The historic statement in respect to the 
 decline and fall of the Roman Empire is what it is re- 
 ported to have been by the great multitude of authors 
 and writers whom Mr. Gibbon had before him in com- 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 
 
 posing his history. His task was to select, compare, 
 reconcile, arrange, and combine into that ove harmoni- 
 ous and magnificent history which he has given to man- 
 kind, all that was credible in that multitude of writers 
 as bearing on the events of history, not to reproduce 
 merely the statement of any one of those authors. The 
 Scripture narrative of an event is what it is reported 
 to have been by ail the sacred writers, and the task of 
 an expositor of the Bible is to compare, reconcile, ar- 
 range, and combine these also into one harmonious 
 whole. The real narrative in regard to the life of the 
 Redeemer is not what it is reported to be by Matthew, 
 or Mark, or Luke, or John—it is the statement of all of 
 them combined. 
 
 It is also a very pertinent question—a question which 
 we may be held to answer—in what manner a religion, 
 urging its claims now on the ground of the evidence on 
 which Christianity advanced ts claims, and on which 
 it undoubtedly made its way in the world eighteen 
 hundred years ago, would be met 7 this age—in this 
 nineteenth century. Would it now, if the same evi- 
 dences of its divine origin were urged, be received as 
 a religion from God? Would it make its way in the 
 world in this age as it did then? Would the evidences 
 of its miracles be received in this scientific and critical 
 age as they were in that comparatively uncritical, un- 
 scientific, and credulous age—an age when men were 
 disposed to believe in the marvelous, and when the be- 
 lief in the supernatural interposition of the gods in hu- 
 man affairs was the common belief of men? Was the 
 evidence of the miracles ever thus subjected to such 
 tests as they would be now, or as they ought to have 
 been; would they convince men now as they did then? 
 If it be admitted that the religion was propagated and 
 
 
 
48 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 embraced then on evidence that seemed to be satisfac- 
 tory to mankind, would it be embraced, and could it be 
 propagated now, on the same evidence? Would not 
 that evidence be subjected to a more rigid and just 
 scrutiny, and would it not, therefore, be rejected? If so, 
 should it not be rejected now ? 
 
 “Let a thaumaturgist,” says Renan,* “present him- 
 self to-morrow with testimony sufficiently important to 
 merit our attention; let him announce that he is able, 
 I will suppose, to raise the dead; what would be done? 
 A commission composed of physiologists, physicians, 
 chemists, persons experienced in historical criticism, 
 would be appointed. This commission would choose 
 the corpse, make it certain that death was real, desig- 
 - nate the hall in which the experiment should be made, 
 and regulate the whole system of precautions necessa- 
 ry to leave no room for doubt. If, under such condi- 
 tions, the resurrection should be performed, a probabil- 
 ity almost equal to certainty would be attained. How- 
 ever, as an experiment ought always to be capable of 
 being repeated, as one ought to be capable of domg 
 again what one has done once, and as, in the matter of 
 miracles, there can be no question of easy or difficult, 
 the thaumaturgist would be invited to reproduce his 
 marvelous acts under other circumstances, upon other 
 bodies, in another medium. If the miracle succeeds 
 each time, two things would be proven: first, that su- 
 pernatural acts do come to pass in the world; second, 
 that the power to perform them belongs or is delegated 
 to certain persons. But who does not see that no mir- 
 acle was ever performed under such conditions; that 
 always hitherto the thaumaturgist has chosen the sub- 
 ject of the experiment, chosen the means, chosen the 
 
 * Life of Jesus, p. 44, 45. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 public; that, moreover, it is, in most. cases, the people 
 themselves who, from the undeniable need which they 
 feel of seeing in great events and great men something 
 divine, create the marvelous legends afterward.” , 
 
 It may be added, as deaeaune this feeling, that the 
 world is (aaa to demand an altogether different 
 class of evidences of Christianity from that which satis- 
 fied the generations that preceded us, and although the 
 authors, some of them at least, who satisfied those gene- 
 rations “ the truth of the Bible, have scarcely passed 
 away, yet that. Grotius de Wer tater and Paley’s Evi- 
 dences, and Lardner’s Credibility, and Chalmers’s Evi- 
 dences of Christianity, are beginning to be regarded as 
 books pertaining to the past—books that performed 
 their work well enough in their own time, but which 
 are soon to be reckoned with the obsolete defenses of 
 Christianity in the times of Porphyry, Celsus, and Ju- 
 lian, or in the times of the British deists of the seven- 
 teenth century. Whatever might have been the value 
 of that evidence, and that mode of argumentation, in a 
 _ former age, and however such arguments may have con- 
 vinced the world in former times, it is now held that 
 we are not at liberty to demand that the same credit 
 shall be given to the arguments in this age. “Let the 
 thaumaturgist,” Renan would say, “ work over the mir- 
 acle in owr times in such a manner as to satisfy an age 
 far different from that when the miracles were pretend- 
 ed to have been wrought.” 
 
 It becomes, therefore, very important. to inquire 
 ‘whether, on the alleged facts on which Christianity was 
 first propagated, and which were regarded eighteen 
 hundred years ago as sufficient evidence to prove that 
 the religion was from God, and under which the relig- 
 ion actually spread over the world, it may be commend- 
 
 C 
 
 > 
 . 
 
50 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ed to mankind now? Or has time so rectified the judg- 
 ment of mankind on the subject of testimony as to show 
 that the evidence was valueless then, and should be re- 
 garded as valueless now, and that the religion was in 
 fact propagated under a delusion? * 
 
 This is a fair question. This introduces the subject 
 of this Lecture. It will be illustrated under two heads: 
 
 The general principles on the subject. 
 
 The application of those principles to the Christian 
 testimony. 
 
 The general subject to be illustrated is, EVIDENCE As 
 AFFECTED BY TIME. 
 
 Evidence as bearing on things to be believed—which 
 is its proper province—must pertain to subjects as math- 
 ematical, as legal, as scientific, as moral, as historical. 
 
 No one would pretend that on these subjects precise- 
 ly the same kind of testimony would be demanded; no 
 one would maintain that the evidence, to be satisfactory 
 to the mind, must be precisely the same; no one would 
 affirm that all would be equally affected by time, or 
 that the same rules are to be applied in estimating their 
 value. 
 
 In mathematics, time makes no change in the force 
 and value of the evidence by which a proposition is es- 
 tablished. Ifit be granted that shorter methods may 
 be used, or that new methods of demonstration may be 
 discovered, as the Algebraic process, or Logarithms, or 
 Fluxions, or the Differential Calculus, yet these do not 
 demonstrate that the former evidence was false, or un- 
 reliable as far as it went, or that that for which it was 
 employed as a demonstration was false. It must be— 
 it can not be otherwise—that Euclid believed that in a 
 right angled triangle the square of the hypothenuse is 
 equal to the sum of the squares on the two sides, on the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 
 
 same evidence on which we believe it, and the proof on 
 which he relied, as far as it was proof, is as forcible now 
 as it was then. ‘Time does nothing to affect that evi- 
 dence.- It neither confirms nor impairs it. The evi- 
 dence is to us precisely what it was to the human mind 
 eighteen hundred years ago, and it will be the same to 
 the end of the world. We believe it not because Eu- 
 clid believed it, or because there is evidence that it was 
 believed then, or because the truth of the proposition 
 was propagated on the ground of the evidence then 
 employed, but because the proof to our minds is precise- 
 ly, neither more nor less, what it was to the first mind 
 on which the truth of the “ forty-seventh” proposition 
 dawned. The proof can not be added to or diminish- 
 ed; and that proof will go down to the end of the 
 world, whatever changes may occur in the laws of crit- 
 icism, or in any advances which may be made in the 
 capability of judging of evidence. Many new truths 
 may be discovered and added to this, but time does not 
 change the faith of mankind in this. 
 In legal matters, time does not necessarily or materi- 
 ally affect evidence. It affects the manner of arriving 
 at it; the question as to what 7s legal testimony ; the 
 determination about the credibility of witnesses; the 
 question how far interest in the case, or relationship to 
 the parties, shall affect their credibility; the mode of 
 examination, in open court or in secret; the credit due 
 to the young, to those of feeble mind, or to those who 
 may be partially insane; the competency of witnesses 
 in general; but the evidence itself is not affected by 
 time. The evidence that Titus killed Gaius in the time 
 of Augustus, and that he was properly convicted and 
 punished, is not modified by the lapse of eighteen hund- 
 red years, and by all the changes which have occurred 
 
52 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 in the world in that time. If the evidence then relied 
 on established the fact so that, under the laws, Titus 
 was justly punished, it establishes it now, so that it 
 ought to go into history, and to be believed in all com- 
 ing time; to become one of the cases of precedents es- 
 tablishing the principles on which justice is to be ad- 
 ministered in every future age. 
 
 In scientific matters, the principles are the same. Tes- 
 timony or evidence is not likely to be affected in any 
 way on these subjects; for, in general, we do not be- 
 lieve the facts of science on the evidence of testimony. 
 Although it is true that the mass of men credit the facts 
 of science—in Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry, and in 
 the kindred sciences—so far as they come before them 
 at all for belief, on the ground of testimony, yet it is 
 also true that these great truths and facts can be sub- 
 jected to experiment and observation by any one that 
 chooses. Galileo testified that there were moons apper- 
 taining to Jupiter. That he did so testify can be easily 
 established by history; that there are moons revolving 
 around the planet is a matter, however, not depending 
 on the credibility of his testimony, or on the historical 
 records of that time, but can be verified by any one by 
 looking through a telescope. 6 
 
 Time sets aside, indeed, many things in science which 
 were once assuredly believed. But it is not done be- 
 cause the testimony is doubtful; it is because the. ob- 
 servations were not accurately made, or because there 
 were false theories, or because better instruments, and 
 a more varied and prolonged observation, have shown 
 exactly what the facts were and are. But time, for 
 example, has not affected the evidence in regard to 
 the facts connected with the celebrated “Eclipse of 
 Thales,” on which so much has been written, and which 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. d3 
 
 has been the subject of so much discussion among as- 
 tronomers — neither the fact in regard to the effect of 
 that eclipse as stated by Herodotus, or the fact that 
 Thales predicted it. Herodotus says (book i., ch. xxiv.) 
 that there was a war between the Lydians and the 
 Medes, and that, after various turns of fortune, “in the 
 sixth year a conflict took place; and on the battle being 
 joined, it happened that the day suddenly became night. 
 And this change,” says he, “'Thales of Miletus had pre- 
 dicted to them, definitely naming the year in which the 
 event took place. The Lydians and the Medes, when 
 - they saw day turned into night, ceased from fighting, 
 and both sides were desirous of peace.”* 
 
 Time, in regard to this event, has undoubtedly shown 
 that the theory which Thales held in regard to astron- 
 omy was a false theory; that the prediction implied 
 no very accurate knowledge of the heavens; that prob- 
 ably ali his knowledge on the subject was derived from 
 the observation of the periodical times when eclipses 
 occur; and that probably also ad/ that he predicted was 
 the year when this eclipse would take place, not the 
 hour, the day, nor even the month; but time has not 
 set aside the evidence in regard to the fact. Thus time 
 may establish the truth ofa scientific event, but not the 
 cause of it; the fact may be demonstrated by testimo- 
 ny to the end of the world, but the testimony does 
 nothing to establish the causes of it. On this point, 
 however, time may do this: while the testimony as to 
 the fact is unaffected, it may do much to show what 
 was, or was not the cause of the event. Time may show 
 that what was regarded as miraculous and supernatu- 
 ral when it happened, took place in the ordinary oper- 
 ations of nature, and the “dim eclipse” which, at the 
 
 * Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i., p. 509. 
 
54 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 time of its occurrence, “ with fear of change perplexed 
 monarchs,” may take its place among ordinary events, 
 to be explained in accordance with ordinary and well- 
 understood laws. The fact existed as recorded; time 
 has changed the views of men in regard to the cause, 
 and reduced it from a marvelous to an ordinary opera- 
 tion of nature. What armies would now be stayed in 
 battle by an eclipse of the sun? Of ancient facts now 
 as reported to us in history, we give credit to the facts 
 as reported; we explain them as we choose. ‘The facts 
 we admit. Here we pause. All in regard to the ex- 
 planation is as much under our control as it was under 
 the control of those who have reported the facts to us. 
 
 In regard to moral subjects—to philosophy—the same 
 remark is to be made. We receive the statement that 
 certain opinions in morals, in philosophy, in religion 
 were held; we embrace those opinions or not, as we 
 choose; we explain and defend them in our own way. 
 It can not be denied, as a matter of historic verity, that 
 Plato, in the Gorgias, argues in favor of the immortal- 
 ity of the soul. The fact that he at times seems to hold | 
 this is not to be set aside. But no one of us believes 
 the doctrine decause he thus testified to it, and no one 
 believes it on the ground of the proof or evidence which 
 he adduces in favor of it. Time holds on to the fact 
 that such opinions were held; it sets aside, it may be, 
 all the arguments on which the opinion was held, or 
 reverses entirely the faith in the doctrine itself. That 
 the schoolmen held certain opinions we do not doubt; 
 that they were defended by great prolixity and by mar- 
 velous subtilty of argument, any one may have evidence 
 of who chooses to look into the ponderous tomes that 
 so calmly now repose in dust in the alcoves of our great 
 libraries, like ancient knights incased in armor in old 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 5d 
 
 cathedrals; but who feels bound to believe their opin- 
 ions; who feels bound to make himself acquainted even 
 with the terms of their logic—the weapons with which 
 they dealt their heavy blows? 
 
 There remains the question as to the bearing of these 
 remarks on historic records—the records of facts per- 
 taining to ancient times. This point will lead to a mat- 
 ter of much interest, and one which specially pertains 
 to us, the question about the facts in regard to the mir- 
 acles of the New Testament. 
 
 It is this kind of evidence which is mainly affected 
 by time; this which leads into the whole region of his- 
 torical criticism. 
 
 The manner in which this evidence is affected by time, 
 and the reasons why there is occasion for the modern 
 science of historical criticism, will be made plain by a 
 few remarks. 
 
 The following things, then, are to be taken into the 
 account in estimating the value of ancient historical 
 testimony: (a) The imperfect observation in regard to 
 the facts that are recorded. (6) The disposition for the 
 marvelous in the early periods ofhistory. (¢) The char- 
 acter of the witnesses for competency, veracity, credi- 
 bility, candor, honesty, freedom from selfish ends. (qd) 
 National vanity ; not a few histories being in fact de- 
 sioned to exalt the glory of one nation over its rivals. 
 (e) The nature of the subject; for on some subjects men 
 are much more honest and credible than on others. 
 Such are, or may be, for example, the views which men 
 have on the subject of religion, that no reliance almost 
 could be placed on their testimony in regard to the facts 
 that pertain to it. The narrative would be certain to 
 be colored by the views entertained on the subject, and 
 the largest allowance would be necessary in estimating 
 
56 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the value of the historical record. (/) The voluntary 
 corruption of records for national, private, or party pur- 
 poses. (g) The slow accumulation of errors in the pro- 
 cess of transcription of records—small at first, and few 
 in number, yet unavoidably perpetuated and multi- 
 plied by time. (4) The number of false or apocryphal 
 histories that may be written for various purposes, as 
 the long imaginary histories of the dynasties of Egypt 
 and India, or the apocryphal Gospels. 
 
 Time affects all these things; and the work of histor- 
 ical criticism when the world becomes sensible that 
 these have accumulated, and that the true should be 
 separated from the false, becomes a work so vast as to 
 be properly dignified with the name of science. Noth- - 
 ing demands more learning, patience, acuteness, sagac- 
 ity, candor, and impartiality than such a work, and he 
 who, in history, contributes any thing to separate the 
 true from the false, and to give the world a correct rec- 
 ord of the past, is to be classed among the benefactors 
 of mankind. 
 
 In looking at these things, and contemplating the 
 uncertainties and the corruptions of history, it becomes 
 a question whether any facts pertaining to the past can 
 be placed on the same level with those which are occur- 
 ring in our own time, and which come under our own 
 observation, or the observation of our contemporaries ; 
 or whether all the alleged facts of ancient history are 
 to be classed among myths and legends; or where, 7f 
 there is true history, the region of legend ends and 
 that of history begins; and 7f legend, myth, and fable 
 reign at all in the past, what is the extent of the domin- 
 ion? Does it terminate with the legends of Livy? 
 Does it cease with the stories of the interventions of 
 the gods in battle, and in the foundation of cities and 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 empires? Or does it embrace also the account of the 
 Creation and Fall in Genesis; the record of the deluge; 
 of the overthrow of Sodom; of the wonders of Egypt ; 
 of the wandering of the Hebrews in the desert; of the 
 miracles of Gideon and Samson—the records of the 
 Gospels, and of the acts of the apostles ? 
 
 Is there any thing that can be known of the past ? 
 
 There is a limit to skepticism in regard to the events 
 of the past, as there is a limit to skepticism on all sub- 
 jects. Valuable in its place, and valuable as an attri- 
 bute of the human mind, yet there is a boundary which 
 the Author of that mind has fixed, beyond which it is 
 not allowed permanently to pass, and the world, sooner 
 or later, works itself right on this subject, as it does on 
 all others. 
 
 There are facts which historical criticism can not ef- 
 fect, and to which skepticism, even that of the most de- 
 structive nature, can not be applied. There are facts 
 which Mr. Hume and Mr. Gibbon found in the past, and 
 which Niebuhr found, and which are never hencefor- 
 ward to be called in question. The question in secular 
 history is, what is their limit? The great question in 
 religion, a question which Strauss, and Renan, and Lep- 
 sius, and Bishop Colenso, and the authors of the “ Es- 
 says and Reviews,” and the writers in the Westminster 
 Review, are endeavoring to help us to solve, is whether 
 the proper limit will exclude the facts in the Life of 
 Jesus, and the miracles of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments ? 
 
 Let us now inquire for a moment what principles are 
 to be applied to the solution of the historical question. 
 
 The world has settled down into a general view on 
 the subject as to what is necessary to establish faith in 
 an ancient fact, and when those things are found, the 
 
 C 2 
 
58 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 faith of the world is, from the constitution of the human 
 mind, as firm as it is in well-established contempora- 
 neous events—it may be said as firm as when an event 
 occurs under our own eyes; for we no more doubt that 
 Ceesar fell by the hands of assassins in the senate-house, 
 or that Xerxes crossed the Hellespont, or that the Per- 
 sians were defeated at Marathon and Salamis, than that 
 Washington fought at Trenton, or that Lord Cornwallis 
 surrendered at Yorktown, or that the tide of rebel in- 
 vasion was turned back at Gettysburg, or that the reb- 
 
 el General Lee surrendered to General Grant. | 
 
 Such things occur as, entering into history, in such 
 cases, as the following: 
 
 (a) When the witnesses are competent, and have a 
 proper opportunity of observing the facts; that is, 
 where the facts are the proper subject of testimony as 
 facts, or as actual occurrences, and not as matters of 
 fancy and opinion. 
 
 (5) When the witnesses concur in the general state- 
 ment of the fact, though they may vary in the circum- 
 stances or details. 
 
 (c) When there is no motive for deception or impos- 
 ture. We do not see, for example, that Tacitus had any 
 motive for either, and hence almost no part of his nar- 
 rative has ever been called in question. 
 
 (72) When the facts recorded are strongly against the 
 religious faith of the narrator, or when he would wish 
 that the facts were otherwise. It is this which gives 
 such value to the statement of Mr. Hume that “ England 
 owes whatever of civil liberty it enjoys to the influence 
 of the Puritans”—a fact which we are morally certain 
 he would have wished to be otherwise, and which he 
 would have kept back if he could have done it as an 
 honest historian; and this it is, with other things, which 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. - 59 
 
 . 
 
 gives so great value to the “ History ofthe Decline and 
 Fall of the Roman Empire,” for many of the facts re- 
 corded by Mr. Gibbon were undoubtedly such as a skep- 
 tic in religion would have wished to have been other- 
 wise; in respect to many of those stated, Mr. Gibbon 
 could not but see that the world would regard them 
 as furnishing proof that the religion was of Divine or- 
 igin; of many of those stated, therefore, it required all 
 his great talents to explain them on the supposition 
 that the religion was false. Yet he recorded them, 
 without suppressing what was true, or interpolating 
 what was false, or perverting what had occurred, leav- 
 ing it to himself and to other skeptics to clues} them 
 as Pa could. 
 
 (ec) When the facts referred to, and which are said to 
 have oecurred, furnish the most easy and natural expla- 
 nation of the existing state of things, or go into exist- 
 ing events as the cause does into the effect, and are in- 
 dispensable to the solution of what actually exists in 
 the world. There are, undoubtedly, numerous things 
 existing in the world—in the civilization, the arts, the 
 laws, the religion—for which the alleged facts in history 
 are the most natural explanation, and which are, in fact, 
 indispensable to the explanation. The main facts which 
 are said to have occurred in the life of Mohammed fur- 
 nish the best explanation of the opinions, the laws, the 
 customs, the religious belief of a hundred and sixty mil- 
 lions of the human family; nor can those opinions, laws, 
 and customs be explained except on the supposition 
 that those facts actually occurred. 
 
 (7) When those facts are commemorated, and the 
 knowledge of them is perpetuated by monuments, coins, 
 medals, games, festivals, processions, and celebrations 
 from age to age ; when, without the supposition of those 
 
 * 
 
60 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 facts, all those things would be unmeaning, or would 
 be wholly inexplicable. The annual observance of the 
 fourth day of July in this country is founded on the 
 Declaration of Independence, and can not be explained 
 except on the belief of the facts as history states them. 
 The division of the lands in England is founded on the 
 fact that there was a “ Doomsday Book,” and that the 
 lands were apportioned in accordance with that. The 
 establishment of the Feudal System in England, the 
 form of the government for ages, the tenure by which 
 land is held, and the distinction of ranks, is founded on 
 the fact that William the Norman was victorious at the 
 battle of Hastings, and that the country was apportion- 
 ed among his barons; nor can the laws in regard to 
 real estate in England for eight hundred years be ex-’ 
 plained except on that supposition. The boundavies of 
 the old thirteen states of the Union can be explained 
 only on the supposition, which history states, that char- 
 ters were granted to the colonies by the crown, fixing 
 those boundaries—for there are no natural boundaries 
 between Massachusetts and New Hampshire; between 
 Connecticut and Massachusetts; between Pennsylvania 
 and New York; between Virginia and North Carolina. 
 The Tower of London can be explained only by a belief 
 in the great facts of history as recorded in the books. 
 What mean those standards taken in war, those old 
 
 ’ - suits of armor, shields, and bows, and battle-axes, but 
 
 that the nation once was as history represents it to have 
 been? How came they.there? Who invented them ? 
 Who had power to persuade the nation that all these 
 had been used in wars and conquests? And what mean 
 those blocks, made as if for beheading men, and those 
 axes, unless it were true that Lord Russell, and Sir Wal- 
 ter Raleigh, and Algernon Sidney were actually behead- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 ed? Who placed them there? Who has been able to 
 persuade the nation that they represent bloody reali- 
 ties ? 
 
 Thus facts come to us about which the world does 
 not doubt; reports of ancient things which can not be 
 explained except on the supposition that the mairf facts 
 as alleged by history are true. So the fossil remains 
 of the earth—the coal-beds—the extinct remains ofraces 
 swept off in times far remote—preserved in enduring 
 rocks, and laid far below the surface of the earth—are, 
 like these old pieces of armor in the Tower of London, 
 memorials of what the history of our world has been. 
 The geologist, a laborious and most useful historian, is 
 performing, by toil and sorrow, what the conductor 
 through the Tower of London does in explaining the 
 history of the past. 
 
 Things, therefore, may be, and are made true in re- 
 gard to the past. No man has any more doubt that 
 Cesar was assassinated Kan he has that Mr. Lincoln 
 was. 
 
 It remains to consider the application of these princi- 
 ples to the particular subject of Christianity—the ques- 
 tion whether time has so affected the evidence in regard 
 to the facts on which Christianity is based as to render 
 those facts unworthy of belief. 
 
 Ihave already remarked that a more unsparing criti- 
 cism has been applied to the historic records of Chris- 
 tianity than to any other records pertaining to the past. 
 All that has been alleged against any other history has 
 been urged against the books of the New Testament; 
 all the charges which have been elsewhere alleged of 
 incompetency on the part of witnesses; of defective ob- 
 servation; of personal interest; of corrupted manu- 
 scripts; of apocryphal writings ; of inconsistencies and 
 
62 : LECTURES ON THE 
 
 contradictions; of uncertain authorship; of improbabil- 
 ity in regard to the events; of mistakes and errors, have 
 been and are alleged in regard to the Evangelists. 
 
 To the ordinary difficulties in regard to ancient rec- 
 ords, there is, in reference to the New Testament, this 
 additional difficulty, greatly augmented by the change 
 in the views of the world on the subject of the super- 
 natural and the marvelous, that the narrative requires 
 us to believe in miracles—not merely that Jesus lived, 
 and taught, and was a good man, and founded Chris- 
 tianity, as Strauss and Renan admit, but that he cast 
 out devils; that he healed diseases by a word; that he 
 raised the dead; that he raised himself from the grave 
 and ascended to heaven—as the difficulty of believing 
 the record of Livy in regard to the foundation of Rome 
 would be greatly augmented if we were required to be- 
 lieve his legends about Romulus and Remus, or the mir- 
 acle when a yawning chasm appeared in the city threat-. 
 ening its very existence, and the closing of the chasm 
 by the self-sacrifice of the gallant Curtius throwing him- 
 self into it clad in full armor. No one can be required, 
 it would be said, in this sharp, keen, searching, scientif- 
 ic age, to believe what men readily believed in the fab- 
 ulous periods of history, when the belief in the super- 
 natural prevailed every where; when eclipses were 
 portents and prodigies; when, in ignorance of the laws 
 of nature, it was believed that the heavenly bodies were 
 moved by angels; that all atmospheric changes were 
 effected by angels; that a special angel was assigned 
 to every star and every element; when it was believed 
 that comets were precursors of calamity, and that a 
 special comet, ominous of evil, preceded the death of 
 such men as Ceesar or Constantine, or that such a comet 
 appeared before the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, be- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 63 
 
 fore the Peloponnesian War, before the civil wars of 
 Cesar and Pompey, before the fall of Jerusalem, before 
 the invasion of Attila, and before the coming of famine 
 and pestilence.* A more relentless criticism by far has 
 been applied to the New Testament than was applied 
 by Wolff to the Iliad, or by Niebuhr to the History of 
 Rome. And what strange, unhistorical theories are 
 held in regard to the four Evangelists! Those Evan- 
 gelists contain indeed fragments of truth. There is 
 enough of truth in them to account for the origin of 
 Christianity. But they are without order or arrange- 
 ment. They are of uncertain date or authorship. ‘They 
 are to be rearranged and reconstructed. The portions 
 added are to be eliminated; the deficiencies are to be 
 made up by sagacity; the improbable parts are to be 
 discarded; all that is miraculous is to be regarded as 
 fabulous and legendary. The system of Christianity is 
 a “myth,” having for its basis a very uncertain person- 
 age, of sufficient reality to suggest the mythical actions 
 ascribed to him, as in Strauss; or Jesus was a real per- 
 sonage, the real founder of Christianity, a young man 
 of vast originality, of wonderful genius, slowly made 
 conscious of his own powers, wrought up to enthusiasm 
 unexpectedly to himself, to believe that he was to change 
 and reform the world, and acting on the borders of in- 
 sanity, as in the romance of Renan. 
 
 What, then, is to be believed? What are the princi- 
 ples, as matters of history, which are to guide us? 
 
 Christianity, as we shall see in a subsequent Lecture, 
 has a history as marked and definite as any other; an 
 origin, a development, a progress, an array of facts that 
 belong to it alone. England has a history: its institu- 
 tions; its judicial arrangements; its trial by jury; its 
 
 * Lecky, Wistory of Rationalism, i., 289, 290. 
 
64 . LECTURES ON THE 
 
 writ of Habeas Corpus; its government by King, Lords, 
 and Commons. Mohammedanism has a history. There 
 is that which is real which has gone into the religion 
 of Islam; which makes it what it is; that without the 
 knowledge of which its facts can not be explained. So 
 has Christianity. 
 
 The principles which are to be applied to this sub- 
 ject, as connected with the train of thought in this Lec- 
 ture, must now be stated in few words. 
 
 (1.) The same principles of historical criticism must be 
 applied to the books of the New Testament as to other 
 books: no sharper, no more lax; no more severe, no 
 more indulgent. No favor should be shown to them 
 because they claim to be sacred books; nor should they 
 be approached with any prejudice, or any suspicion, on 
 that account. The question is not what the book 7s 
 about ; it is whether it 7s true. It is possible, in the 
 nature of things, that a book may record correctly the 
 account of the healing of a blind man, or the raising of 
 aman from the dead; and, if such events have actually 
 occurred, it is not to be assumed that a correct record 
 can not be made of them, for such a record is as possi- 
 ble as the record of a battle or a record of travels. 
 And, on the other hand, it should not be claimed that 
 such a record, even when it describes the resurrection of 
 the Redeemer from the grave, laying the foundation of 
 the hope of immortal life for man, is to be exempt from 
 the profane hands of criticism, or that a man is guil- 
 ty of presumption, profaneness, or blasphemy who ap- 
 proaches such a record as he does the writings of Livy 
 or Tacitus. Perhaps it should be said that the very 
 importance of the stfbject, and the very sacredness of 
 the subject, and the vastness of the interests at stake, 
 should make the search into the genuineness and the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 65 
 
 accuracy of the narrative more keen and skeptical—as 
 the claim of a title to a peerage or a vast estate would 
 be examined more carefully than the title to the office 
 of a justice of the peace or to a few acres of ground; or 
 as one would examine more carefully the evidence that 
 a ship was so constructed as to bear him safely across 
 the ocean, than he would the capability of a skiff to 
 sport with on a pond. 
 
 That there has been a delusion on this subject, on 
 both sides, there can be no doubt. The facts that the 
 books of the New Testament are regarded as sacred; 
 that they pertain to religion; that faith in them has 
 been for ages imbedded in the hearts of men; that the 
 hopes of men are founded on them; that the consequen- 
 ces of finding that they are false would be terrible— 
 leaving man without hope—darkening the world, dark 
 enough at any rate, by the gloom of absolute despair— 
 these facts, it can not be denied, have influenced many 
 in regard to the manner in which they should approach 
 those books. To them, too, it seems to be an act of pro- 
 faneness—a crucifying again of the Lord of glory—to 
 approach the account of the sufferings, the death, and 
 the resurrection of the Redeemer with the same rules 
 with which we approach the account of the plague in 
 Athens by Thucydides, and to apply the same rules to 
 the one which we apply to the others. Despite every 
 effort to the contrary, we can not but have a different 
 feeling, apart from any thing in the spirit and design 
 of the men, toward Strauss and Renan, from what we 
 have toward Wolff and Niebuhr; for we can hardly 
 help feeling that they have profanely, like Uzzah, touch- 
 ed the ark of God. In the one case, we feel that no 
 great interests are at stake, whether the narrative is 
 true or false; in the other is involved all that is dear 
 and sacred to the souls of men. 
 
66 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Yet the sacrifice must be made; the feeling that this 
 is irreverence and profaneness must be overcome. y- 
 ery man has a right to approach the most sacred rec- 
 ords of the Bible with the same severe and stern rules 
 of criticism with which the love of truth would impel 
 him to approach any ancient records whatever. Nay, 
 every man is bound to do it; for higher interests than 
 any which are involved in an inquiry into the title to a 
 peerage or an estate, or any involved in recorded facts 
 in regard to the rise and fall of empires, are at stake. 
 It is to be remarked, indeed, that it is not inconsistent 
 with historical candor that a man should approach the 
 records of the New Testament with the hope that they 
 may be found to be true, just as a man may approach 
 the examination of the evidence that the title to his 
 farm is good, or of the news which he has received of 
 the safety of a son that he had supposed was lost at sea, 
 or as he may look on the evidence that his slandered 
 wife is chaste, with the hope that the evidence will be 
 found to be true. It is not, it can not be wrong in me 
 to desire to find evidence that there is a God and a Say- 
 ior; that I am to exist forever; that a way of redemp- 
 tion has been provided for sinners; and that there is a 
 world of glory and purity beyond the grave. Nor is 
 such a desire incompatible with candor in the examina- 
 tion of the evidence; for the very greatness of the hope, 
 and of the interests at stake, should, and naturally will, 
 make the mind calm and candid. 
 
 (2.) The great facts of Christianity are indisputably 
 established, and this has been done by the ordinary 
 methods of historic evidence. Those facts have gone 
 into history as all other ancient facts have done, and 
 the history of the world can not be explained or under- 
 stood without admitting their reality. The condition 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 67 
 
 of, the world as it is now has grown out of those facts, 
 and that condition can no more be explained without 
 the admission of the truth of those facts than the Con- 
 stitution and laws of England can be explained without 
 admitting the truth that Alfred reigned, or that Wil- 
 liam the Norman conquered at Hastings and divided 
 the kingdom among his followers, or that from John 
 great concessions were obtained by his barons at Run- 
 nymede. 
 
 The facts to which I now advert in regard to Chris- 
 tianity as established by evidence are such as the fol- 
 lowing: (a) That it had an origin far within the limits 
 of well-established history. It has not always been 
 upon the earth. ‘There have been centuries—many cen- 
 turies—in the history of the world in which it had no 
 existence, and when no germ existed from which it could 
 have been developed. We can go back to the times 
 of which Berosus, Thucydides, Livy make mention, and 
 we can be certain that it did not then, either in germ 
 or in development, exist upon the earth. (6) The time 
 when it appeared, or when it was originated, is also a 
 matter of history. The disputed passage in Josephus, 
 if that is genuine, demonstrates it. The undisputed 
 passage in Tacitus proves it beyond a question. The 
 fact that the time of its origin is not made a question 
 with Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, confirms this. The 
 record of Mr. Gibbon puts the matter beyond all doubt. 
 It was a necessity in his historical purpose that he should 
 trace the history of Christianity from its origin, and he 
 has done it. (c) The main facts of the birth, the life, 
 the character, and the death of the Founder of Chris- 
 - tianity are matters of history. ‘Strauss does not deny 
 the reality of the existence of Jesus, though the things 
 ascribed to him are “ mythical;” Renan does not deny 
 
68 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 his existence, or the main facts of his history, though 
 he has his own way of telling the story. The whole of 
 his romance is founded on the admission of the main 
 facts of his life. Jesus was an historical person. There 
 is the most marked distinction between him and Mars, 
 and Apollo, and Minerva; between him and King Ar- 
 thur, and Lear. The fact of his having lived is as clear- 
 ly established as that of Alexander; the fact of his death, 
 and the manner of his death, as that of Cesar. (d) The 
 fact that Christianity was propagated, or was spread 
 through the world from small beginnings, is established 
 by history. Its progress from land to land can be 
 traced; the steps of its movement can be marked on a 
 map from the time of its humble beginning till it mount- 
 ed the throne of the Cesars. Nothing is more definite 
 and certain in history than the facts about its origin, 
 and its propagation in the world. Mr. Gibbon has 
 traced it as clearly and as honestly as he has the career 
 of his favorite Julian, and the facts have gone into the 
 undisputed history of nations. (e) History has estab- 
 lished the fact that the religion was propagated on the 
 ground of the belief in the miracles which were alleged 
 to have been wrought in attestation of its truth, and 
 especially on the belief that its Author, haying been put 
 to death on a cross, rose again from the dead. What- 
 ever may be the truth in regard to those miracles, and 
 the fact of that resurrection, no one can doubt that these 
 things were put forward; that the belief of them was 
 made essential to the reception of the system; and that 
 its propagation is to be explained on the ground that 
 these things were believed to be true; and that it can 
 not be explained on any other ground. No one, not 
 Mr. Gibbon, or Renan, or Strauss, has attempted to ex- 
 plain the fact of the propagation of Christianity on the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 
 
 ground that no claim was set up in regard to the res- 
 urrection of Jesus, or on the ground that the claim thus 
 set up was false. Assuredly the people of the Roman 
 empire, when they embraced Christianity, did it in the 
 belief that its Author had been raised from the dead, 
 and the belief of this was vital to the reception and ex- 
 tension of the system. The religion could not have 
 been propagated had it not been for this belief, and it 
 is equally clear that the account of this could not have 
 been inserted in the narrative respecting the founder 
 of the system afterward; that is, if it should be sup- 
 posed that the religion had been propagated without 
 this belief, it would have been impossible to make this 
 an article of faith afterward. How could it be inserted 
 in the original records? How could men be made to 
 believe that a doctrine never adverted to in the propa- 
 gation of a system had been, in fact, the main thing in 
 commending it to the world? (/) Once more: These 
 points are not affected materially by the questions 
 whether miracles were wrought, or whether Jesus was 
 actually raised from the dead. The point which I am 
 making is, that the religion was propagated on the be- 
 lief of those things, not on the ground of their truth. 
 How far the fact tlfit the world Jelieved in the reality 
 of the miracles, and that great multitudes of all classes 
 abandoned their ancient systems of religion, and em- 
 braced Christianity as true, on that belief, proves that 
 the miracles were real, is another point which it is prop- 
 er to argue with an infidel in its proper place. But 
 that is not the point now before us. 
 
 (3.) In looking at the question how far the evidence 
 of ancient facts is affected by time, I adverted, under 
 the general inquiry, to these circumstances—when the 
 witnesses are competent, and have a proper opportuni- 
 
70 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ty of observing the facts; when there is no motive for 
 deception or imposture; when the facts narrated are 
 against the religious faith of the narrator; when the 
 facts referred to furnish the most easy and natural ex- 
 planation of existing things; and when these facts are 
 commemorated and perpetuated by monuments, coins, 
 medals, games, festivals, processions, and celebrations ; 
 that is, when they go into the very structure of society, 
 and when it is no more easy to detach them from exist- 
 ing things than it was to detach the name of Phidias 
 from the statue of Minerva without destroying the 
 image. You can not explain the history of the world 
 without the supposition that Casar was put to death 
 by the hand of assassins. 
 
 It remains only to apply this principle, in few words, 
 to Christianity. 
 
 . Suppose, then, it were not true that Cesar was put to 
 death; suppose that the facts which I have adverted 
 to in regard to Christianity, in its history, are false; 
 what follows? What is to be done then? What is 
 the proper work of the man who does not believe this ? 
 
 On the principles now laid down, we have the same 
 confirmation of the main facts of. the history of Chris- 
 tianity which we have of the deatH#of Cesar, the life of 
 Alfred, and the conquest of England by William the 
 Norman, though on a wider scale, and affecting more 
 deeply the course of history and the condition of the 
 world; for, in the existing state of things on the earth, 
 for one such thing that goes to establish those secular 
 facts, and to make the supposition of their reality indis- 
 pensable to the explanation of existing things, there are 
 ten, at least, that go to confirm the truth of the main 
 facts of the New Testament. Hard is the task of the 
 skeptic who denies the reality of the death of Cesar 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITX. Ts 
 
 in the senate-house, or of the existence of Alfred, or 
 of the conquest of William the Norman; harder by 
 far the task of the skeptic who denies the realities of 
 the life and death of Jesus. For, in this case, he must 
 suppose that all history, secular and sacred, has been 
 corrupted and is unreliable; he must suppose that 
 Christianity sprang up without any adequate cause, 
 and at a time unknown; he must suppose that it made 
 its way in the world on what was known to be false- 
 hood; he must suppose that men every where embraced 
 the system manifestly against their own interests, and 
 with nothing to satisfy them of its truth; he must leave 
 unexplained the conduct of thousands of martyrs, many 
 of them of no mean name in philosophy and in social 
 rank; he must explain how it was that acute and sub- 
 tle enemies, like Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, did not 
 make short work of the argument by denying the truth 
 of the main facts of the Christian history ; he must ex- 
 plain the origin of the numerous monuments in the 
 world which have been reared on the supposition of the 
 truth of the great facts of Christian history—the ancient 
 temples whose ruins are scattered every where, the 
 tombs and inscriptions in the Catacombs at Rome, the 
 sculptures and paintings which have called forth the 
 highest efforts of genius in the early and the medieval 
 ages, and the books that have been written on the sup- 
 position that the religion had the origin ascribed to it 
 in the New Testament; he must explain the observance 
 of the first day of the week in so many lands, and for so 
 many ages, in commemoration of the belief that Christ 
 rose from the dead; he must explain the observance of 
 the day which is supposed to commemorate the birth 
 of the Redeemer, as one would have to explain the ob- 
 servance of the birthday of Washington, on the suppo- 
 
ree LECTURES ON THE 
 
 sition that Washington was a “myth,” and the observy- 
 ance of the fourth day of July on the supposition that 
 what has been regarded as a history of the American 
 Revolution was a romance; he must explain the ordi- 
 nance kept up in memory of his death for nearly two 
 thousand years on the supposition that the death of 
 Christ never occurred on the cross at all; he must ex- 
 plain the honor and the homage done to the cross every 
 where—as a standard in war, as a symbol of faith, as 
 a charm or an amulet, as an ornament worn by beauty 
 and piety, as reared on high to mark the place where 
 God is worshiped, as an emblem of self-sacrifice, of love, 
 of unsullied purity—the cross in itself more ignomini- 
 ous than the guillotine or the gibbet—for why should 
 men do such things with a gibbet if all is imaginary ? 
 —and he must explain all those coins, and medals, 
 and memorials which crowd palaces, and cabinets, and 
 churches, and private dwellings, and which are found 
 beneath decayed and ruined cities, on the supposition 
 ‘that all these are based on falsehood, and that in all 
 history there has been nothing to correspond to them 
 or to suggest them. Can the fossil remains of the Old 
 World, the ferns in coal-beds, and the forms of fishes 
 imbedded in the rocks, and the bones of mammoths, and 
 the skeletons of the Ichthyosaurian and Plesiosaurian 
 races, be explained on the supposition that such vege- 
 tables, and such land and marine monsters never lived ? 
 Will the geologist who happens to be an infidel in re- 
 ligion allow us to urge this in regard to those apparent 
 records of the former history of the world? Will he 
 then demand that all in history, in monuments, medals, 
 tombs, inscriptions, customs, laws, sacred festivals, re- 
 ligious rites, that seem to be founded on the truth of the 
 great facts of Christianity, shall be explained on the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 73 
 
 supposition that no such facts ever occurred? that all 
 this is myth, and fable, and delusion ? 
 
 Hard would be the task of the infidel if he were to 
 undertake this. It was too much for Mr. Gibbon, and 
 he therefore set himself to the work of showing how, 
 on the admission of these main facts, the propagation 
 of the religion could be explained on the supposition 
 that it had not a divine origin; it was too much for 
 Strauss, and he therefore set himself to the task of show- 
 ing how, on the supposition that Jesus lived, the system 
 of Christianity could be made to grow around a few 
 central truths, representing in imagined action the ideas 
 of deceivers and impostors; it was too much for Renan, 
 who, admitting the main facts in the New Testament, 
 and attributing to the founder of the system unequaled 
 genius, and a power of which he became slowly con- 
 scious, accompanied with much self-delusion, attempted 
 to show how he originated a system designed to over- 
 turn all existing systems, and a system that did accom- 
 plish it. Each and all of these things go to confirm the . 
 position which I have endeavored to establish in this 
 Lecture, that time does not materially affect the evi- 
 dence of the great facts ofhistory ; that what was prop- 
 erly believed at the time when the events occurred may 
 be properly believed now; that if the historic records 
 were lost, we could reproduce many of the leading 
 events of the history of the world. In particular, if the 
 New Testament were destroyed, we could reproduce, 
 from other sources, the main facts pertaining to the life 
 and death of the Founder of Christianity, on which the 
 religion was propagated and received, and the great 
 features of the system as it was first propounded to the 
 world. 
 
 How far the principles laid down in this Lecture bear 
 
 D 
 
74. LECTURES ON THE 
 
 on the subject of miracles, and how far it is necessary 
 to assume the correctness of the records of miraculous 
 events in the New Testament, to explain the fact that 
 the religion was propagated in the world, and has been 
 continued to the nineteenth century, will be considered 
 in the application of these principles in the subsequent 
 Lectures. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 10 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 HISTORICAL EVIDENCE AS AFFECTED BY SCIENCE. 
 
 TueE subject of this lecture will be Historical Evidence 
 as affected by Science, particularly the relation of Sci- 
 ence to Christianity as affecting the evidence of its di- 
 vine origin. | 
 
 There is a wide-spread apprehension among many of 
 the friends of Christianity that Science, in its progress, 
 may set aside the evidence that the Bible is a system 
 of revealed truth, and that, if the point is not already 
 reached, it may soon be, when they will be found to be 
 incompatible with each other, and when it will be im- 
 possible to reconcile them. There is probably more 
 apprehension on this subject among the true friends of 
 Christianity than they would like to avow to them- 
 selves or to others, and there is more dissatisfaction 
 with the attempts which are made to remove the diffi- 
 culties, and to reconcile the two, than they would think 
 it prudent to admit. There is many a skeptical thought 
 in a Christian’s mind which he would be unwilling to 
 utter, for he would not be desirous that his friends 
 should know how much he is perplexed on the subject, 
 and he would not think it right to expose the faith of 
 others to the shock which would be felt if they knew 
 what was passing through his mind. ‘ Oh the tempta- 
 tions,” said Dr. Payson, “which have harassed me for 
 the last three months! I have met with nothing like 
 them in books. I dare not mention them to any mor- 
 tal, lest they should trouble him as they have troubled 
 
76 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 me; but should I become an apostate, and write against 
 religion, it seems to me that I could bring forward ob- 
 jections which would shake the faith of all the Chris- 
 tians in the world. What I marvel at is that the Arch- 
 deceiver has never been permitted to suggest them to 
 some of his scribes, and have them published.” “ My 
 difficulties,” said he in a letter to a friend, “increase 
 every year. There is one trial which you can not know 
 experimentally. It is that of being obliged to preach 
 to others when one doubts of every thing, and can 
 scarcely believe that there is a God. All the atheisti- 
 cal, deistical, and heretical objections which I meet 
 with in books, are childish babblings compared with 
 those which Satan suggests, and which he urges upon 
 the mind with a force which seems irresistible. Yet I 
 am often obliged to write sermons, and to preach, when 
 these objections beat upon me like a whirlwind, and al- 
 most distract me.”* Cecil has made a similar remark: 
 ““T have read,” said he, “all the most acute and serious 
 infidel writers, and have been surprised at their pover- 
 ty. The process of my mind has been such on the sub- 
 ject of revelation that I have often thought Satan has 
 done more for me than for the best of them; for Ihave 
 had, and would have produced, arguments that appear- 
 ed to me far more weighty than any I ever found in 
 them against revelation.”+ In this respect, as in others, 
 a good man is often in the situation in which the Psalm- 
 ist was, when, in deep perplexity about the justice of 
 the divine dealings, he said, “If I say I will speak thus, 
 behold, I should offend against the generation of thy 
 children.”—Psa. Ixxiil., 15. He is therefore silent, hop- 
 ing almost against hope, that his apprehensions may not 
 be well founded, and yet not daring to push the inves- 
 
 * Payson’s Works, vol. i., p. 379, 380, ed. Portland, 1846. — 
 + Works of Rev. Richard Cecil, vol. iii., p. 110. 
 
_ EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 17 
 
 tigation farther himself He is, in this respect, like the 
 mariner who fears to examine his ship lest he should 
 find the wood-work of the bottom eaten through, and 
 nothing between him and the waters but the thin 
 sheathing of copper; or the invalid who fears to have 
 his lungs examined from the apprehension that the ex- 
 aminer may find there the unmistakable beginnings of 
 a fatal disease; or the merchant who fears to examine 
 his books from the apprehension that he will find him- 
 self to be a bankrupt. The ship, therefore, unexamined, 
 moves on, the slight cough is borne as well as it can be, 
 and the man of business tries to be calm under the ap- ° 
 prehension that, if the truth were known, he would be 
 found to be not worth a farthing. 
 
 There is a secret confident feeling on the part of not 
 a few men devoted to scientific pursuits that all this is 
 so, and that these fears in regard to Christianity are 
 well founded. In not a few things, in his apprehension, 
 the statements of the Bible and the disclosures of Scei- 
 ence have been demonstrated to be irreconcilable, and 
 he smiles complacently at the efforts made by the 
 friends of religion, and especially by ministers of the 
 Gospel, to harmonize them. He feels a confident assur- 
 ance that one difficulty on the subject will succeed 
 another, and that if a plausible solution of one discrep- 
 ancy is suggested, Science will suggest a dozen where 
 the points will be irreconcilable. He has that kind of 
 carelessness, therefore, which a man has in playing a 
 game of chess when he feels that, though his adversary 
 may extricate himself out of some small difficulty in the 
 - moye, yet the general course of the game is certain, and 
 he can afford to be calm; or which the commander of 
 the armies of the Union might have felt before Rich- 
 mond, when, though there might have been a tempora- 
 ry reverse, yet the great plan of the campaign was de- 
 
78 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 veloping itself, and the final overthrow of the enemy 
 was certain. So, it is to be feared, not a few men feel 
 about the final overthrow of Christianity by Science. 
 They do not exult. They do not care to use the lan- 
 guage of triumph. They do not boast of victory: they 
 smile within, and calmly await the result. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it becomes a very import- 
 ant matter to inquire what tendency, if any, there is in 
 this direction, or what Science has done, or can do, to 
 render the statements in the Bible incredible. ‘The ex- 
 act point for consideration on the subject may be easily 
 understood. There are many things, it would be said, 
 which were not regarded as incredible at an early pe- 
 riod of the world, or which men readily received as 
 real under the prevailing forms of belief, which Science ~ 
 ultimately shows to be utterly incredible, and which it 
 removes from the faith of mankind. By the same pro- 
 cess it may remove ali that is marvelous or supernatu- 
 ral, and thus ultimately destroy every vestige of an ar- 
 gument for the divine origin of the religion. 
 
 An illustration will make this point plain. There was 
 nothing, it would be said, in the statements of Livy 
 about the prodigies which he records at the foundation 
 of Rome, or in the early periods of the Roman history, 
 which was contrary to the existing belief at that time, 
 which the prevailing views of the nature of evidence 
 rendered unworthy of belief, or which was a departure 
 from what was expected to be, and what was under- 
 stood to be, the course of affairs on the earth. It was 
 an age of the supernatural and the marvelous. The 
 world was prepared to receive these accounts. There 
 was universal faith in superior beings; in the fact that 
 they often interposed directly in the affairs of men; that 
 empires were founded, that battles were decided, and 
 that the world was controlled by these supernatural 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 79 
 
 agencies. There were no settled principles of Science 
 contrary to the belief in prodigies, in sorcery, in divina- 
 tion, in necromancy, in demonology, in the reappear- 
 ance of the dead. 
 
 Time has made important changes in regard to these 
 alleged facts. It has reduced them to legends and 
 myths, and the historical critic diminishes the number 
 of things to be believed by mankind by the whole 
 region of the supernatural. Science has taught what 
 may be regarded as credible and what as incredible, 
 and the reader of Roman history no longer feels him- 
 self bound to embrace these early marvels as a part of 
 the true history of Rome. : 
 
 The same thing, it is now alleged, has occurred in re- 
 gard to the record of miracles and marvels in the Bible. 
 In the early history of the world, and at the time, and 
 in the countries where the books of the Bible were 
 composed, there was nothing in those miracles and mar- 
 vels which was inconsistent with the prevalent modes of 
 belief, or with the knowledge of the universe as then un- 
 derstood. Faith in the miraculous and the marvelous 
 was then the normal state of belief. All that could not 
 be explained on natural principles—and there were as 
 yet but few things that could be thus explained—was 
 supposed to be the result of supernatural intervention. 
 Kclipses, comets, meteors, earthquakes, the pestilence, 
 the storm, and the tempest—all these and similar things 
 were supposed to be the result of direct supernatural 
 interposition, Demonology, sorcery, astrology, witch- 
 craft, necromancy, furnished all the explanations which 
 men had of events lying beyond the range of ordinary 
 experience, and the groves, the waters, the hills, the 
 valleys became filled with supernatural influences and 
 beings. When the Bible was composed, it is said, 
 there was nothing inconsistent with such belief, and 
 
80 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 nothing in its statements to shock the general faith of 
 mankind, or to violate any of the known laws on which 
 the world is governed. It was not then regarded as 
 more wonderful than other things were supposed to 
 be, and, therefore, not incredible, that God should make 
 man from the dust of the earth ; or that He should form 
 a woman from the rib of a man; or that a serpent 
 should speak in human language; or that an ass should 
 use human speech; or that the sun and moon should 
 be made to stand still in their course that a battle 
 might be finished; or that the dead should appear; or 
 that the earth should heave, and the sun be darkened, 
 when the Savior died. . 
 
 But Science now has gone far to establish the reign 
 of universal law, to remove these marvels from the 
 faith of men, to displace the belief in supernatural agen- 
 cies, and to bring all things under the dominion of law ; 
 and the question occurs whether all those things which 
 were once regarded as marvelous are not now to be re- 
 duced to the same rank as the marvels in Livy, or are 
 not to take their place on the same level as the ancient: 
 belief in sorcery, astrology, necromancy, and witchcraft. 
 So “Rationalism” demands, and so no inconsiderable 
 part of the scientific world is disposed to assert. 
 
 It requires now some boldness in a man who wishes 
 to stand well in the scientific world to avow his belief 
 in the events of this kind recorded in the Bible. There 
 are very many scientific associations before which such 
 a man would hesitate in an attempt to explaim and vin- 
 dicate the first four chapters in Genesis, and in relation 
 to which he would prefer silence to any distinct. utter- 
 ance of his own opinion; and a minister of the Gospel 
 in this age encounters a difficulty which would not have 
 been felt in a more credulous age—than he would have 
 done at a time when such events pervaded all history, 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 81 
 
 and when faith in such events entered into the creed 
 of all men. Some, in this state of things, prefer to be 
 silent on the whole subject; some wait for more full 
 developments; some tremble at the announcement of a 
 new discovery in Science as if another prop was to be 
 taken from the faith; some are willing to hide the 
 naked and offensive statements in the Bible under the 
 garb of allegories and myths; some are willing to con- 
 cede the fact that there was ignorance on the part of 
 the sacred writers on those subjects, and they endeavor 
 to calm down their own apprehensions by the supposi- 
 tion that the sacred writers were not inspired on those 
 subjects, and were, therefore, as lable to be mistaken 
 as other men. 
 
 The subject has become, therefore, a very important 
 one to be examined in a consideration of the argument 
 on the Evidences of Christianity, and any man would 
 render a valuable service to the Christian world who 
 could make suggestions that would calm down the 
 anxieties of the minds of good men, and who could 
 show that Science has not yet reached a point that 
 need alarm the friends of the Bible. 
 
 The subject, in its highest bearings, is far beyond my 
 ability, and were that not so, it could not be exhausted 
 in a single Lecture. But it may be possible to suggest 
 some thoughts on points on which the friends of Science 
 and Revelation may have a common understanding, and 
 which may do something to repress apprehension on 
 the one hand, and exultation on the other. I approach 
 this subject—as many of those whom I address will in 
 their subsequent lives—under all the disadvantages 
 produced by the common feeling that a minister of the 
 Gospel is little qualified to grapple with these diffi- 
 culties; that his studies lie apart from those which are 
 
 D2 
 
82 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 pursued in the schools of Science; that in no one of the 
 sciences can he be supposed to be as much at home as 
 he is in his own particular department, or as a scien- 
 tific man is in his; and perhaps it would be urged with 
 special force—and I certainly feel and admit that con- 
 sideration fully in my own case—that a man who re- 
 ceived his education nearly half a century ago, and 
 then an imperfect one, can not be supposed, in the act- 
 ive pursuits of another profession, to have kept pace 
 with the advancements of Science in that remarkable 
 half century, or to be competent to speak to those who 
 have devoted their lives to those pursuits. All this I 
 feel and admit; and yet, on the other hand, it may be 
 that something has occurred to such a man in his own 
 reading and profession, as bearing on the subject, which 
 may not have occurred to one engrossed in another 
 profession as he has been in his. 
 
 I shall, therefore, submit some remarks to you de- 
 signed to illustrate the relation of Science to Christi- 
 anity as affecting, in the nineteenth century, the evi- 
 dence of its truth, 
 
 I. There must be entire harmony between the proper 
 deductions of Science and a revelation from God. On 
 most of the subjects of revelation, indeed, it is to be pre- 
 sumed that the communications made would be such as 
 not to admit of comparison with what Science teaches, 
 for it must be presumed that, if a revelation is given at 
 all, it will be, for the most part, on subjects which lie 
 beyond the range of man’s natural powers, and the 
 points of actual contact on the high themes of theology 
 and the disclosures of Science must therefore be few. 
 In fact, in a revelation from God designed to guide man 
 in the duties of religion and in a preparation for an- 
 other world—which must be the main design of a rey- 
 elation—it is to be presumed that the points of contact 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 83 
 
 would be mostly incidental. Revelation is not given to 
 teach geography, geology, anatomy, astronomy, chem- 
 istry, but religion. 
 
 Still, it is right to assume and to demand that, where 
 there are any statements in a book that claims to be a 
 revelation from God, on the subjects of Science, inciden- 
 tal or otherwise, they must and will be in accordance 
 with what is disclosed by an accurate investigation of 
 the works of God. The friends of revelation must ad- 
 mit this; the enemies of revelation may hold them 
 to it. 
 
 This position is self-evident and indisputable except 
 on a supposition which the friends of Science will not 
 allow us to make, and which we have no right and no 
 desire to make, that the Maker of the world, according 
 to the doctrine of the Manichees, was a different Being 
 from the Supreme God. In such a case, indeed, under 
 the dualistic system of Zoroaster and the Manichees, it 
 would be conceivable that a direct revelation from the 
 Supreme Being might contain principles not reconcila- 
 ble with the facts which Science would exhibit as de- 
 rived from the actual creation. There is, indeed, an- 
 other supposition which may be adverted to, where the 
 same result would follow—that there is something in 
 God which is not properly expressed in the works of 
 creation, in the course of events, or in our moral nature, 
 but that, when those higher things in God are under- 
 stood, they will veverse many of our conceptions now of 
 that which is right and that which is wrong; of that 
 which is true and that which is false; of that which is 
 to be loved and of that which is hated. Such an idea 
 has been suggested by one of no less authority than 
 Mansel. 
 
 _ But we can not be at liberty to avail ourselves of 
 
84 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 this idea in extricating ourselves from any difficulty 
 arising from the conflict of revealed religion and Sci- 
 ence, for right is right, and wrong is wrong, every 
 where, and we can not believe that the Great Creator 
 has stamped upon the intellect and the conscience of 
 men a universal lie, so creating them that they are un- 
 der a necessity of believing that to be right which he 
 knows to be wrong, and which he himself knows they 
 will ultimately perceive to be wrong, and, therefore, 
 we are shut up to the necessity of admitting and main- 
 taining that between a true revelation and the fair de- 
 ductions of Science there must be harmony. This idea, 
 moreover, we urge in all our endeavors to overthrow 
 the false religions of the heathen, and of this we pur- 
 pose, In our missionary efforts, to make great use in 
 showing that the books among them which claim to 
 be a revelation can not be from the true God. 
 
 The enemies of the Christian religion may therefore 
 hold us to this, and may insist on it, that if the state- 
 ments in the Bible are contradictory to the disclosures 
 of Science, and can not by fair means be shown to be in 
 harmony with them, the Bible must be given up in its 
 pretensions to being a revelation from God. 
 
 If. Asecond principle may be stated as indisputable, 
 that the deductions of Science are to be admitted as 
 true, wherever they may lead, or on whatever they may 
 impinge. 
 
 This principle, also, is so clear that it is difficult to 
 make it more plain by any illustration. We are so 
 made that we must admit this; all our plans, and all 
 our hopes, are based on this. All that, as friends of 
 religion, we have a right to demand on the subject is, 
 that the things which we are to believe, which may or 
 may not affect religion, shall e¢ true deductions of 
 
_ EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 85 
 
 Science. They must not be mere theories; they must 
 not be conclusions based on a partial and imperfect ob- 
 servation of the facts in the case; they must not be 
 views embraced manifestly with a purpose to destroy 
 the credit of revelation; they must be points about 
 which there can be no dispute, and in reference to 
 which there will be no presumption that time and far- 
 ther observation will set them aside. If the belief of 
 the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid 
 will destroy the faith of mankind in the Bible, be it so. 
 We can not help it. But it is to be observed, on the 
 other side, that there have been a thousand things as- 
 sumed to be scientific truths, and which were in con- 
 flict with the statements of revelation, which time, bet- 
 ter instruments, and farther investigation have shown 
 to be false. 
 
 It is to be admitted and expected that Science, in its 
 progress, will set aside many things existing in the 
 world pertaining to common matters, and it is not less 
 to be presumed that it will set aside many things that 
 have been supposed to be connected with religion, and 
 that this may at the time shock or shake the faith. of 
 many believers in the Bible, as if all were lost. Thus a 
 good axe or hoe, made on scientific principles, sets aside 
 those which may have been long in use; the printing- 
 press set aside the apparatus for copying; the power- 
 loom sets aside the hand-loom; the spinning-jenny sets 
 aside the domestic wheel; the reaping machine sets 
 aside the sickle and the scythe; the sewing machine 
 sets aside, to a large extent, the common use of the 
 needle. | 
 
 In like manner, books are set aside as valueless ex- 
 cept as records of history. Every new discovery ren- 
 ders the old book of less value, until it becomes worth- 
 
86 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 less. Galen and Hippocrates cease to be of value in 
 medicine ; Mela and Strabo in geography; and Ptolemy 
 in astronomy. Thus old machines, old books, Indian 
 relics, and suits of ancient armor, become fit occupants 
 of old libraries and of museums—the lumber, the débris 
 of former times. The very fact that a book is “rare” 
 is prima facie proof that it has been -superseded by 
 something better, and is worthless; and every writer 
 on Science, and most of those on any subject in litera- 
 ture, must lay his account with the expectation that in 
 that very department some man will make a brighter 
 discovery, or write a better book, that will place what 
 he has done among the things that the world will 
 “willingly let die.” Scientific men must accept this, 
 and must toil on in their generation with the feeling 
 that this is to be the end of their labors. 
 
 The same principle is applicable to religion. As in 
 its own proper department Science makes its way re- 
 gardless of opinions before held, and reputations won, 
 and glory deemed to be immortal, and garlands that 
 were supposed to be unfading, and patents secured, and 
 money invested, and corporations strong and powerful, 
 so Science will make its way on whatever it may im- 
 pinge, however it may affect the faith of men, what- 
 ever it may do in disrobing priests and throwing down 
 altars, and changing temples of worship to other pur- 
 poses, and disturbing established investments, and what- 
 ever ruins it may strew in its path. 
 
 The religious part of the world must make up its 
 mind to accept all the disclosures of true Science, how- 
 ever they may impinge on its articles of faith. If the 
 facts of Science are hopelessly irreconcilable with the 
 statements of the Bible, but one result can follow. The 
 Bible will be abandoned. The truths of Science will 
 
_ EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 87 
 
 stand. At first it will be abandoned by the scientific 
 world, and then it will retain what hold it can be made 
 to retain on the masses of men as the result of educa- 
 tion, or tradition, or priestly power, or the conscious 
 want of some religion; but, sooner or later, though 
 slowly, it will lose its hold on mankind, as the belief 
 in necromancy, demonology, sorcery, witchcraft, and 
 magic, was at first embraced by all men, and then, as 
 Science advanced, lost their hold on those who were 
 capable of explaining the phenomena of the world on 
 scientific principles, retaining still their hold on the 
 masses, until Science, diffused every where, removes 
 all faith in sorcery and magic from the world. 
 
 III. In forming a correct estimate on this subject, 
 there are, however, certain things to be taken into the 
 account, of which the friends of religion have a right to 
 avail themselves, and to demand that they shall be re- 
 garded as important elements in determining the judg- 
 ment of mankind. 
 
 (1.) One of those things is the uncertainty of Science, 
 at least as bearing on the points at issue between sci- 
 ence and revelation. 
 
 It may startle some to hear the expression, “the un- 
 certainty of Science.” It may demand some boldness, 
 and may do not a little to peril a man’s reputation, to 
 use such an expression. We have been so much accus- 
 tomed to the word “ exact,” as connected with the sci- 
 ences, and have been so taught to believe that a mathe- 
 matical demonstration must be absolutely certain, and 
 have hence so hastily applied the same idea to all other 
 demonstrations in Science, that we have learned to con- 
 fine the words “moral” or “probable,” as applied to 
 evidence, to other subjects altogether, and hence it has 
 come to be understood that. an important distinction, 
 
88 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 in this respect, is to be made between the evidence of 
 a scientific proposition and that for a revelation: the 
 words “exact” and “certain” to be applied exclusively 
 to the one; the words “ moral” and “ probable” only be- 
 longing a the other. 
 
 But, on this subject, it is span erpsin that such things 
 as the following should be borne in mind: 
 
 (a) When we look at the past in history, what is 
 more vague and uncertain than the “sciences” as they 
 have been held among men? What “science” now is 
 the same that it was two thousand years ago? What 
 has been more shifting, undefined, and unstable than the 
 “sciences” as they have been actually held? Let any 
 man read so common a book as Whewell’s “ History of 
 the Inductive Sciences,” and instead of rising from the 
 perusal with the idea that Science is “exact,” “cer- 
 tain,” and “stable,” he will be much more likely to in- 
 stitute a comparison between it and the ever-changing 
 sands on the shores of the ocean than with the fixed 
 and everlasting hills. 
 
 And again: On what points, outside of the small cir- 
 cle of the mathematical demonstrations, zs Science ‘ cer- 
 tain?” What is light? What is matter? What is gal- 
 vanism? What is gravitation? What is attraction ? 
 What is heat ? What is life? How many are the orig- 
 inal elements of matter? In what proportions do they 
 combine, and by what power are they held in combina- 
 tion? How many are the worlds that roll above us? 
 What is the duration of our own globe? When, and 
 how was it formed and moulded? And what “exact” 
 changes has it undergone? Is there any one of these 
 and numberless kindred points on which the views of 
 scientific men are settled and “certain?” Is there any 
 one on which there are not as many different and shad- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 89 
 
 owy opinions as there are on the doctrine of the Trin- 
 ity or Incarnation? On the one subject of geology so 
 early as the year 1806, the French Institute counted 
 more than eighty theories hostile to Scripture history, 
 not one of which has stood to the present day. How 
 many such theories have appeared and vanished since? 
 
 (0) And what is the range of scientific knowledge ? 
 How soon does man get to the extent of his faculties, 
 and what vast oceans of knowledge lie now unexplored, 
 as in the time of Newton? In one sense the knowledge 
 of man is indeed vast, and all the epithets which we can 
 use in describing it are deserved. But what does man 
 know? He sees but a little way around him, and be- 
 yond all is dark. What does he know of the distant 
 worlds? What does he know of the sun, or the moon, 
 or the planets, or the fixed stars, or the comets? What 
 is their history ? What their compositions? What the 
 character of their inhabitants, if they have any? What 
 can he tell about the nearest fixed star? It is not a 
 knowledge of that star to be able to determine its “ par- 
 allax,” or to be able to determine that the ray of light 
 that comes to our eyes from that star, informing us of 
 its existence, has been traveling twenty thousand years 
 to give us the information, and that therefore the star 
 itself may have ceased to exist twenty thousand years 
 ago. And of the worlds beyond such a star what does” 
 man know? The truth is, that we have but just opened 
 our eyes on a universe that in its creation demanded all ° 
 the power and the wisdom of an Infinite God. Man— 
 the wisest man—the man of farthest grasp—the man 
 who has accumulated most, has but just left his cradle. 
 But a few days ago he knew not any thing, not even 
 the name of father or mother. He could neither speak 
 nor stand. He knew not that a candle would burn his 
 
90 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 finger if he put it there. By slow degrees he learned 
 to creep, and then to walk. He began to utter sounds 
 which were kindly construed into language. He lisp- 
 ed, and hesitated, and then achieved a great victory by 
 being able to utter a few simple monosyllables. And 
 then how soon he thinks that he knows all about the 
 universe so vast, and the God who made it. Thus a fine 
 writer, speaking of the sum of Physical Science, says: 
 “Compared with the comprehensible universe and 
 with conceivable time, not to speak of infinity and eter- 
 nity, it is the observation of a mere point, the experi- 
 ence of an instant. Are we warranted in founding any 
 thing upon such data, except that which we are obliged 
 to found on them, the daily rules and processes neces- 
 sary for the natural life of man? We call the discoy- 
 eries of Science sublime; and truly. But the sublimity 
 belongs not to that which they reveal, but to that 
 which they suggest. And that which they suggest is, 
 that through this material glory and beauty, of which 
 we see a little and imagine more, there speaks to us a 
 Being whose nature is akin to ours, and who has made 
 our hearts capable of such converse. Astronomy has 
 its practical uses, without which man’s intellect would 
 hardly rouse itself to those speculations ; but its great- 
 est result is a revelation of immensity pervaded by one 
 informing mind, and this revelation is made by astron- 
 omy only in the same sense in which the telescope re- 
 veals the stars to the eye of the astronomer. Science 
 finds no law for the thoughts which, with her aid, are 
 ministered to man by the starry skies. Science can ex- 
 plain the hues of sunset, but she can not tell from what 
 urns of pain and pleasure its pensiveness is poured. 
 These things are felt by all men—felt the more in pro- 
 portion as the mind is higher. They are a part of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 91 
 
 human nature; and why should they not be as sound 
 a basis for philosophy as any other part? But if they 
 are, the solid wall of material law melts away, and 
 through the whole order of the material world pours 
 the influence, the personal influence, of a spirit corre- 
 sponding to our own. 
 
 “ Again, is it true that the fixed or the unvarying is 
 the last revelation of Science? These risings in the 
 scale of created beings, this gradual evolution of plan- 
 etary systems from their centre, do they bespeak mere 
 creative force? Do they not rather bespeak something 
 which, for want of an adequate word, we must call cre- 
 ative effort, corresponding to the effort by which man 
 raises himself and his estate ? And where effort can be 
 discovered, does not spirit reign again ? 
 
 ‘A creature whose sphere of vision is.a speck, whose 
 experience is a second, sees the pencil of Raphael mov- 
 ing over the canvas of the Transfiguration; it sees the 
 pencil moving over its own speck, during its own sec- 
 ond of existence, in one particular direction, and it con- 
 cludes that the formula expressing that direction is the 
 secret of the whole.’* 
 
 (c) Again, it is to be borne in mind that there are 
 subjects of knowledge, and they may be most moment- 
 ous in their nature, that lie wholly beyond the range 
 of Physical Science, and must ever lie there. Science 
 has its sphere; beyond that sphere it has no instru- 
 ments, no knowledge. 
 
 The great subjects of theology are of this character, 
 and must ever be. The anatomist and the chemist do 
 not profess to teach theology; nor do they teach it. 
 Their investigations throw no light on the doctrine of 
 the immortality of the soul; on the questions about a 
 
 * Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, pp. 86-88. 
 
92 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 future state; on the inquiry how a sinner may be récon- 
 ciled to God. The electrial machine throws out no light 
 on those subjects; the scalpel of the anatomist does not 
 even disclose the source of life; the glass of the astron- 
 omer does not penetrate far enough into the distant 
 ether to reveal the throne of God. How far, then, 
 Science should presume to speak of that which is whol- 
 ly beyond its range, may be a fair question. How far 
 it should sit in judgment on that which lies wholly 
 without its sphere, is an equally fair question. - Geolo- 
 gy, chemistry, metallurgy, have their sphere—wide, no- 
 ble, honorable ; but the atonement, the incarnation, the 
 Trinity, the fall of man, the work of redemption, per- 
 tain to another sphere, not less wide, noble, honorable. 
 Each one in its place.* Each one to be honored. Each 
 one to contribute any thing, every thing it can to the 
 other, and to the whole; but each one to be confined 
 to its proper sphere. 
 
 It may yet be seen that there is a “ division of labor” 
 in the departments of human action more wide than is 
 commonly supposed to be implied in that modern dis- 
 covery of wisdom. Each pin-maker labors in his own 
 department, and the man who makes the head does not 
 interfere with him who cuts the wire, or him who sharp- 
 ens the point; each gun-maker labors in his own depart- 
 ment, and he who makes the stock does not interfere 
 with him who makes the barrel, or the rod, or the bayo- 
 net, or the hammer to the lock. All work in harmony ; 
 all contribute to the result, for the work of one fits into 
 the work of another, as if all were the work of one man. 
 
 It is certain that in Science each department will 
 communicate nothing but that which pertains to itself; 
 that chemistry is not to be learned in the dissecting- 
 
 * Ne sutor supra crepidam.—Piin. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 93 
 
 room of the anatomist, or music: by the telescope, or 
 moral philosophy by the examination of fossils; and it 
 is equally certain that none of those sciences will com- 
 municate to man what he needs to know about the im- 
 mortality of the soul; that the question about the res- 
 urrection of the dead is not to be decided by an exam- 
 ination of the rocks; that the blow-pipe of the chemist, 
 and the hammer of the geologist, do not reveal to a sin- 
 ner the way of salvation. 
 
 (d) Again, the past experience of the world should be 
 allowed to teach men of science modesty and caution. 
 It should not be forgotten that there is no opinion so 
 extravagant and wild that it has not been at some time 
 embraced by philosophers, by men of science ;* and it 
 should not be forgotten that a very large part of the 
 doctrines held in science in past times have been found 
 by more accurate observation to be absurd, and have 
 been dropped by the way, and are now numbered and 
 classified with the huge monsters—themselves not less ~ 
 monstrous —the ichthyosaurians and the plethiosauri- 
 ans of the old geological periods of our world’s history. 
 It is to be remembered, also, that the world has gone 
 through a long experience on the very-subject now be- 
 fore us, the bearing of Science on revelation, and that 
 not_one new discovery has been made in Science which 
 has not at the time been supposed to impinge on some 
 doctrine of revealed religion, and which has not caused 
 momentary alarm to the friends of religion, and mo- 
 mentary triumph to its foes. Yet Christianity has sur- 
 vived them all.+ So it may be in regard to the sciences 
 
 * Nihil tam absurde potest, quod non dicatur ab aliquo philoso- 
 phorum.— Cicero, de Divinatione, ii., 58. 
 
 +See this admirably illustrated in Wiseman’s Lectures on Science 
 and Revealed Religion, ed. Andover, 1837. 
 
94 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 as understood now, and to those which remain to be 
 disclosed in the advancing periods of the world. 
 
 (ec) One other thing may be adverted to. It may be 
 that the facts of Science are not as well established as 
 they are claimed to be. Which of them is, in fact, set- 
 tled? Which of them is complete and perfect? Is 
 geology? It is, as yet, in the cradle. Is astronomy? 
 How little of the universe is surveyed and known. Is 
 chemistry? What chemist is there who stops where 
 he is, and supposes that his work is perfect, and that 
 nothing remains to be known? Is anatomy? What 
 anatomist lays down his scalpel, and feels that all stim- 
 ulus to future discovery has ended? What book is 
 there on any of the subjects of Science which can be 
 safely stereotyped? What man is there who can feel 
 assured that his profoundest speculations of this year 
 will not be classed next year with the almanac which 
 has had its day? The young men of each generation 
 are stimulated to make attainments in Science, because 
 there are vast fields yet unexplored; the traveler in 
 unknown lands is cheered because a vast and inviting 
 field is before him which the foot of man has never 
 trod, and as he passes on in his obstructed way through 
 fields of flowers new to the eye of man, and ascends 
 streams on which man has never glided, and climbs the 
 mountain-top on which a human being has never before 
 stood, and looks abroad on rich valleys that still invite 
 ‘him, he is animated and excited by the fact that all 
 this is unknown, nor would he thank any one, not even 
 his Maker, to disclose all this to his view, and to stifle 
 the ardor derived from the hope of future discoveries. 
 So many a patient student of the heavens each night, 
 when most mortal eyes are locked in slumber, is look- 
 ing out from the watch-tower—the “ observatory”—sur- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 95 
 
 veying the heavens with the hope that some new star 
 may be seen on which the eye of man has never rested, 
 that shall solve some discrepancy of Science, or whose 
 discovery may perchance place his name by the side of 
 that of Le Verrier. | 
 
 IV. A very material inquiry therefore meets us here. 
 It is, What are we to expect on this subject ? What have 
 we aright to demand in a book submitting itself to us 
 as a revelation from God? Suppose the scientific man 
 entertains for a moment the idea that a “ book-revela- 
 tion” could be made, or that God would impart truths 
 directly by inspiration beyond what man can discover 
 by his unaided. powers, what would he have a right to 
 demand or expect? And how far would such a reason- 
 able expectation correspond with what actually occurs 
 in regard to the Bible? 
 
 It is not difficult to answer these questions. 
 
 (1.) We should expect—we should feel ourselves au- 
 thorized to demand, in the sense that we could not re- 
 ceive it as a revelation otherwise—that the revelation 
 should not contradict the disclosures of Science, as we 
 expect that the disclosures made by the telescope will 
 not contradict those made by the naked eye. The 
 telescope, under the laws of vision, simply carries the 
 vision farther, and extends it into regions beyond the 
 natural range of the eye. But we anticipate this in 
 regard to its disclosures, that while it reveals new 
 worlds, it will reveal them as subject to the same laws 
 which reign within the scope of our natural vision, and 
 that we shall not, however vast may be the extent of 
 our aided vision, or however deep we plunge into the 
 distant ether, be conducted into the empire of another 
 God. Such is the fact. The distant worlds, however 
 far from us, and however vast, are subject to the same 
 
96 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 laws of light and motion which are observed on our 
 own planet; nor even when we have passed our own 
 solar system, and the nebula to which it belongs, and 
 contemplate more vast and distant nebulex, that seem 
 to float as independent systems or universes, wholly sep- 
 arated from ours, do we come into the dominion of an- 
 other Creator and another God. 
 
 So we expect of revelation. If God has given two 
 books to men, the book of nature and the book of grace, 
 a revelation through his works and an independent 
 “book”-revelation by his word, we expect, we demand 
 that they shall be reconcilable with each other. And, 
 unless this is done, we are so made that we can not re- 
 ceive the latter. 
 
 (2.) We should expect that such a revelation would 
 be confined mainly to the subject of religion. It is true 
 that in such a revelation the truths of Science might 
 have been disclosed as well as the truths of religion, for 
 all this knowledge is in the mind of God, and he might 
 have revealed a system of botany, or mineralogy, or 
 anatomy, or chemistry, or astronomy that would have 
 been perfect. But there were reasons which could easily 
 be suggested why it was not desirable or wise that this 
 should be; why the discoveries on these subjects should 
 be left to the investigations of men themselves, and 
 why they should be developed when the condition of 
 the world would be such that society would be pre- 
 pared for them, and when the world would appreciate 
 them. There were reasons why the art of working 
 metals should to some extent be known in the time of 
 Tubal-Cain (Gen., iv., 22), but what would have been the 
 value of a revelation of the use of the steam-engine, of 
 the art of printing, or of the magnetic telegraph at that 
 age of the world? It was wise and best that, when 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 97 
 
 the world was prepared by its ordinary developments 
 to be lifted to a higher level, men of extraordinary 
 genius should be raised up to strike out the new inven- 
 tions that would be demanded at that period of the 
 world, for the real progress of the race would be better 
 accomplished in this way than by a direct revelation 
 from heaven. It was not for the good of the race, as 
 Ihave endeavored to show in a former Lecture, that, on 
 subjects which properly lie within the rangé of the hu- 
 man faculties, the knowledge which is needful for man 
 should be communicated by a direct revelation from 
 God, and hence what we should anticipate in such a 
 revelation would be that it would be mainly confined 
 to the subject of religion. In fact, it has never been 
 made an objection to the Bible as a professed revela- 
 tion that it does not deal with the subjects of Science, 
 and does not claim to be an arbiter in its mooted 
 questions. 
 
 (3.) We should expect and demand in a revelation 
 that if there were incidental allusions or references to 
 other subjects than the main subject of religion, they 
 would be so made as to be in harmony with the infor- 
 mation obtained on those subjects from other sources, 
 or be susceptible of reconciliation with them. <A skep- 
 tic would have a right to demand this; our own nature, 
 as we are made, requires it. We act on this principle 
 in the attempt to propagate our religion, and to set 
 aside the revelations of other religions, and we regard 
 it as a sufficient proof that they are false if we can show 
 that they contradict the statenents of true Science. 
 
 (4.) Yet it could not be claimed that there should be 
 no apparent conflict between the two. We do not go 
 very far in the pursuit of knowledge on any scientific 
 subject, on any question of history, on any matter of 
 
 4 
 
98 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 philosophy, without finding that there is an apparent 
 conflict between the disclosures made to us and the 
 things already known or believed; and I need not say 
 that a very material part of scientific study consists in 
 the work of reconciling one thing with another, or in 
 showing that there is real harmony where there is appa- 
 rent discord. How slow and toilsome has been the proc- 
 ess of reconciling the Copernican theory in regard to the 
 ’ movements of the heavenly bodies with admitted facts, 
 or of reconciling the theory with apparent irregulari- 
 ties. And when has a new discovery been made that 
 did not require a new adjustment ? How long did as- 
 tronomers wait, how deeply were they perplexed, in 
 regard to certain irregularities in the planet Uranus, 
 that was supposed to be the most.remote in the sys- 
 tem, until Le Verrier and Adams suggested that there 
 was still another, sunk deeper in the depths of space, 
 and as yet unknown, whose existence, size, and moye- 
 ments might reconcile and harmonize all ? 
 
 (5.) Once more. On the subjects pertaining to Sci- 
 ence in such a revelation, we should expect that the 
 statements made would be in the common language 
 used by men, and not in technical scientific terms. The 
 reasons for this are obvious. Such truths could be made 
 intelligible only by such language, and such language: 
 is used by scientific men themselves, even on subjects 
 where they have the most accurate definitions. No 
 greater jargon could be imagined—surpassing in appa- 
 rent unintelligibleness and nonsense what occurred at 
 Babel—than would be an attempt to hold conversation 
 in the technical language of chemistry, of anatomy, or 
 of medicine, and there is no surer proof of pedantry 
 than such an attempt. “Language,” said Talleyrand, 
 “is for the purpose of concealing ideas ;” and a revela- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 99 
 
 tion in scientific language would accomplish that be- 
 yond even the language of German transcendentalists. 
 What would be the language of the world if reduced 
 to scientific terms? By what cumbersome and unin- 
 telligible technicalities would men describe the rising 
 or the setting of the sun, or the operations of walking, 
 and seeing, and hearing, and eating, and cooking? Who 
 could understand any thing of a rose if the technical 
 language of botanists only were used, or of water, air, 
 or earth, if only the technical language of chemistry 
 were employed? In the words of Kepler: “ Astronomy 
 unfolds the causes of natural things; it professedly in- 
 vestigates optical illusions. Astronomers do not pur- 
 sue this science with the design of uttering language. 
 We say, with the common people, the planets stand 
 still or go down; the sun rises and sets. How much 
 less should we require that the Scriptures of divine 
 inspiration, setting aside the common modes of speech, 
 should shape their words according to the model of the 
 natural sciences, and, by employing a dark and inappro- 
 priate phraseology about things which surpass the com- 
 prehension of those whom it designs to instruct, perplex 
 the simple people of God, and thus obstruct its own 
 way toward the attamment of the far more exalted ob- 
 ‘ject at which it aims.”* 
 
 VY. It is a very material question now, How far Sci- 
 ence has affected the evidences of the truth of Chris- 
 tianity ; how far it has rendered the proofs of its divine 
 origin commonly relied on uncertain or doubtful; how 
 far, if at all, it has rendered them valueless ? 
 
 This is a very large subject—too large to be consid- 
 ered in the little time now remaining in this Lecture ; 
 and as, in some form, it will occur more than once 
 
 * Quoted in Lee on Inspiration, p. 370. 
 
100 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 again in this course, a few suggestions only need now 
 be made. 
 
 The inquiry pertains to two points: What Science 
 has removed that was once supposed to be a part of 
 revelation; and Whether it has affected that which is 
 a real part of revelation, and which properly belongs 
 to it. 
 
 On the first of these points we now go hand in hand 
 with the skeptic and the doubter. Science has done 
 much, and perhaps the progress of civilization. more, 
 in detaching from religion, and, if I may so say, from 
 the Bible+that is, from the Bible as it was formerly in- 
 terpreted—much that would now, if it properly pertain-. 
 ed.to the Bible, be fatal to any claims to a divine ori- 
 gin. The Christian world has been indeed shocked and 
 alarmed as one after another of these things has been 
 assailed, for it was supposed that they were essential 
 to religion; that they were incorporated in the Bible, 
 and that they were always to be regarded as essential — 
 points of the Christian faith. The assault on these 
 things has been supposed to be an assault made by in- 
 fidelity ; the skepticism produced in regard to them 
 has been feared to be on the one hand, and claimed to 
 be on the other, the triumph of skepticism. But Sci- 
 ence, in its progress, has disabused the minds of men on 
 these subjects, and has thus, in fact, been a helper, and 
 not a hinderer, in embracing the evidences of Chris- 
 tianity—an auxiliary, and not a foe—for it has shown 
 that in receiving the Bible men are not required to em- 
 brace what was once regarded as essential to the faith. 
 The question which remains for solution, and which is 
 agitated in. this age, is, How far this is to go, and 
 whether all that is supernatural and miraculous in the 
 Scriptures is to be given up at the demand of Science, 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 101 
 
 in order that religion may commend itself to the faith 
 of mankind. 
 
 The history on this subject is, in fact, the history of 
 “ Rationalism,” in the broadest and best sense of that 
 term. The subject has occupied and is occupying the 
 attention of minds, partly among Christians and partly 
 among skeptics, which must be admitted to be abun- 
 dantly competent to grapple withit. Coleridge, among 
 those that speak our language, perhaps began it; Sir 
 David Brewster did much to disabuse the minds of men 
 on the subject, and to relieve Christianity of a burden, 
 in his “ History of Magic ;” Germany has made it prom- 
 inent in its inquiries ; Dr. Channing and Theodore Par- 
 ker lent their aid to it in their way; and Buckle and 
 Lecky, with different aims, have traced elaborately the 
 course of thought in the history of the world on the 
 subject.* 
 
 The ‘sum is this: In the early periods of the world 
 all things were full of marvels and wonders; all things 
 not understood, and few things were supposed to be 
 understood, were under the control of the supernatural. 
 An eclipse was a prodigy, a miracle wrought for some 
 special purpose; the plague and pestilence were prodi- 
 gies brought upon men for special purposes; the gods 
 constautly appeared acting in human affairs; the stars, 
 by a potent influence, presided over the birth and death 
 of individuals; the dead reappeared, and it was possi- 
 ble to make a compact with them for good or evil pur- 
 poses; the groves, the hills, the streams, were full of 
 dryads, and nymphs, and fauns; and the belief in charms 
 
 * Probably the best and most reliable history on the subject, as it 
 is certainly the best written, is Lecky’s ‘‘ History of the Rise and Influ- 
 ence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe.” 
 
102 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 and incantations, in sorcery and witchcraft, was uni- 
 versal. 
 
 Time, science, and civilization have scattered most 
 of these delusions, and have reduced to regular laws 
 most of what was supposed to belong to the supernat- 
 ural. The naiads, and fauns, and nymphs have disap- 
 _ peared; the groves have been unpeopled except in 
 poetry ; the belief in sorcery and witchcraft has been 
 banished from the world; and the belief is cherished, 
 and the hope entertained by those who have been most 
 active in disenchanting the world, that all that has oc- 
 curred, or that does now occur in our world, may be 
 traced to regular and fixed laws, excluding the super- 
 natural altogether. | 
 
 It-is not difficult to understand what the tendency of 
 this process is, or what effect it is likely to have on 
 large classes of mind in regard to the miraculous and 
 the supernatural in the Bible. The real question is 
 whether this shall extend to all the events that have 
 occurred in our world; whether all the facts that have 
 taken place, including those which have occurred in 
 connection with events claimed to be miraculous, can 
 be reduced to regular laws; and whether all which can 
 not be so reduced shall not at once be regarded as de- 
 lusion and imposture. Science and civilization having 
 done so much to drive sorcery, and magic, and witch-’ 
 craft, and astrology, and necromancy, and superstition 
 from the world, and having gone so far to establish the 
 reign of regular law, the question is whether the tri- 
 umph is not to be completed, and whether any thing is 
 to be left for direct divine intervention, and whether 
 we may not arrive at a point, or have not already 
 reached it, when it may be assumed as a maxim in 
 Science that any thing claiming to be miraculous is” 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 103 
 
 at once to be rejected. Strauss reached that conclu- 
 sion: “ We may,” says he, “summarily reject all mira- 
 cles, prophecies, narratives of angels and demons, and 
 the like, as simply impossible and irreconcilable with 
 the known and universal laws which govern the course 
 of events.”* The tendency on this subject no one can 
 doubt. That tendency has been described at length by 
 one who can not be supposed to have any wish in that 
 direction, but who has traced, with the hand of a mas- 
 ter, the process by which the world has reached its pres- 
 ent position in regard to the miraculous and the super- 
 natural. Among other things he says: “ Men are pre- 
 pared to admit almost any conceivable concurrence of 
 natural improbabilities rather than resort to the hy- 
 pothesis of supernatural interference ; and this spirit is 
 exhibited not merely by open skeptics, but by men who 
 are sincere, though perhaps not very fervent believers 
 in their church. It is the prevailing characteristic of 
 that vast body of educated persons whose lives are 
 chiefly spent in secular pursuits, and who, while they 
 receive with uninquiring faith the great doctrines of 
 Catholicism, and duly perform its leading duties, derive 
 their mental tene and coloring from the general spirit 
 of their age. If you speak to them on the subject they 
 will reply with a shrug anda smile.” “If we put aside 
 the clergy and those who are most immediately under 
 their influence, we find that this habit of mind [among 
 the Roman Catholics] is the invariable concomitant of 
 education, and is the especial characteristic of those 
 persons whose intellectual sympathies are most ex- 
 tended, and who therefore represent most faithfully 
 the various intellectual influences of their time.” “ All 
 history shows that in exact proportion as nations ad- 
 
 * Introduction to the Life of Jesus. 
 
° 
 
 104 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 vance in civilization, the accounts of miracles taking 
 place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last 
 they entirely cease.” These facts “show that the re- 
 pugnance of men to believe miraculous narratives is in 
 direct proportion to the progress of civilization and the 
 diffusion of knowledge.” ‘The plain fact is, that the 
 progress of civilization produces invariably a certain 
 tone and habit of thought which makes men recoil from 
 miraculous narratives with an instinctive and imme- 
 diate repugnance, as though they were essentially in- 
 credible, independently of any definite arguments, and 
 in spite of dogmatic teaching.” “Generation after 
 generation, the province of the miraculous has con- 
 tracted, and the circle of skepticism has expanded. Of 
 the two great divisions of these events, one has com- 
 pletely perished. Witchcraft, and diabolical possession, 
 and diabolical disease have long since passed into the 
 region of fables. To disbelieve them was at first the 
 eccentricity of a few isolated thinkers; it was then the 
 distinction of the educated classes in the most advanced 
 nations; it is now the common sentiment of all classes 
 in all countries of Europe. The countless miracles that 
 were once associated with every relic and with every 
 village shrine have rapidly and silently disappeared. 
 Year by year the incredulity became more manifest, 
 even where the theological profession was unchanged. 
 Their numbers continually lessened until they at last 
 almost ceased, and any attempt to revive them has 
 been treated with a general and undisguised contempt. 
 The miracles of the fathers are passed over with an in- 
 credulous scorn or with a significant silence. ‘The ra- 
 tionalistic spirit has even attempted to explain away 
 those which are recorded in Scripture, and it has mate- 
 rially altered their position in the systems of theology. 
 
BVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 105 
 
 In all countries, in all churches, in all parties, among men 
 of every variety of character and opinion, we have found 
 the tendency existing. In each nation its development 
 has been a measure of intellectual activity, and has 
 passed in regular course through the different strata of 
 society. During the last century it has advanced with 
 a vastly accelerated rapidity ; the old lines of demarca- 
 tion have been every where obscured, and the spirit of 
 Rationalism has become the great centre to which the 
 intellect of Europe is manifestly tending. If we trace 
 the progress of the movement from its origin to the 
 present day, we find that it has completely altered the 
 whole aspect and complexion of religion. When it be- 
 gan, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely be- 
 yond the range and scope of human reason; it was im- 
 pious to question; it was impious to examine; it was 
 impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was vis- 
 ibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every 
 order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth in- 
 cessantly from all its parts. They excited no skepti- 
 cism and no surprise. The miraculous element pervaded 
 all literature, explained all difficulties, consecrated all 
 doctrines. Every unusual phenomenon was immedi- 
 ately referred to a supernatural agency, not because 
 there was a passion for the improbable, but because 
 such an explanation seemed far more simple and easy 
 of belief than the obscure theories of Science. In the 
 present day Christianity is regarded as a system which 
 courts the strictest investigation, and which, among 
 many other functions, was designed to vivify and stim- 
 ulate all the energies of man. The idea of the mirac- 
 ulous, which a superficial observer might have once 
 deemed its most prominent characteristic, has been 
 driven from almost all its intrenchments, and now quiv- 
 EK 2 
 
106 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ers faintly and feebly through the mists of eighteen 
 hundred years.”* 
 
 The friends of Christianity who still retain their faith 
 in the miraculous do not deny that Science and civiliza- 
 tion have done much to change the views of the world 
 in regard to the marvelous, and that they have done 
 much to disprove what was once held to be taught in 
 the Bible. At the same time, however, the progress of 
 a more correct exegesis has shown that many of these 
 things are not taught in the Bible, and thus religion 
 has been delivered from a burden which in the present 
 state of the world it would not have been able to bear; 
 for we could not now go before the world with the 
 defense of witchcraft or sorcery as once held; or with 
 the views of Turretin in regard to the creation, as, in 
 his apprehension, taught in the Scriptures ;+ or with 
 the views of Cosmas, of the sixth century, in regard to 
 the structure of the universe.{ 
 
 * Lecky, History of Rationalism, vol. i., p. 160, 161, 162, 194, 195. 
 
 + ‘‘ First,” he remarks, ‘‘the sun is said in Scripture to move in the 
 heavens, and to rise and set. ‘The sun is as a bridegroom coming 
 out of his chambers, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race.” 
 ‘The sun knoweth his going down.’ ‘The sun ariseth, and the sun 
 goeth down.’ Secondly, The sun, by a miracle, stood still in the 
 time of Joshua, and by a miracle it went back in the time of Heze- 
 kiah. Thirdly, The earth is said to be fixed immovably. ‘The 
 earth also is established, that it can not be moved.’ ‘Thou hast es- 
 tablished the earth, and it abideth.’ ‘ They continue this day accord- 
 ing to thine ordinances.’ Fourthly, Neither could birds, which often 
 fly off through an hour’s circuit, be able to return to their nests. 
 Fifthly, Whatever flies or is suspended in the air ought by this theory 
 to move from west to east; but this is proved not to be true, from 
 birds, arrows shot forth, atoms made manifest in the sun, and down 
 floating in the atmosphere.” 
 
 t ‘‘ According to Cosmas, the world is a flat parallelogram. Its 
 length, which should be measured from east to west, is the double 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 107 
 
 How far this is to proceed is now the great question 
 between the friends and the enemies of the Bible—the 
 one claiming that the miraculous and the supernatural 
 are not to be abandoned; the other that nothing shall 
 be received and believed by men which can not be ex- 
 plained by established and unvarying law. Here is to 
 be the battle-ground of this generation, and perhaps of 
 the next; for this warfare men are girding on their 
 armor; for this conflict, as much as for any other, the 
 young men who are preparing for the ministry must be 
 prepared. 
 
 The great questions which now le open, and which 
 are, in their relations to Christianity and Science, to be 
 examined and determined, are substantially these: The 
 creation of the world—whether it was, in fact, created 
 at all, as stated in the Bible, and in the order affirmed 
 in the first chapter of Genesis; the antiquity of the 
 human race— whether man existed upon the earth at 
 
 of its breadth, which should be measured from north to south. In 
 the centre is the earth we inhabit, which is surrounded by the ocean ; 
 and this again is encircled by another earth, in which men lived be- 
 fore the deluge, and from which Noah was transported in the ark. 
 To the north of the world is a high conical mountain, around which 
 the sun and moon continually revolve. When the sun is hid behind 
 the mountain, it is night; when it is on one side of the mountain, it 
 is day. To the edges of the outer earth the sky is glued. It consists 
 of four high walls rising to a great height, and then meeting in a vast 
 concave roof, thus forming an immense edifice, of which our world is 
 the floor. This edifice is divided into two stories by the firmament, 
 which is placed between the earth and the roof of the sky. A great 
 ocean is inserted in the side of the firmament remote from the carth. 
 This is what is signified by the waters that are above the firmament. 
 The space from these waters to the roof of the sky is allotted to the 
 blest; that from the firmament to our earth to the angels, in their 
 character of ministering spirits.”—Lecky, History of Rationalism, 
 Melt aD, Lids 
 
108 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 a period anterior to that which is fairly implied in the 
 Bible; the origin of the race—whether the different 
 types of men upon the earth have a common origin, 
 and have been derived from a single pair, as is affirmed 
 in the Bible, or whether men have sprung up in differ- 
 ent centres, either as developed from inferior orders of 
 creatures, or from independent created “ heads” of the 
 different races, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Ethi- 
 opian, the American ; and the whole question of mira- 
 cles—whether they are possible; whether a miracle can 
 be believed, or whether the laws of nature are so fixed 
 and unchanging that there never has been, and never 
 can be, sufficient evidence of the direct interposition of 
 the divine power to justify the belief that those laws 
 have ever been set aside. 
 
 It remains now to be said that, whatever may be 
 hereafter, Science has furnished no demonstrations on 
 these points which should give the friends of relig- 
 ion real cause of alarm. It has not yet been dem- 
 onstrated that the universe was not created, and in 
 the order described by Moses; it has not yet been 
 proved that man has been upon the earth for a period 
 longer than that assigned by a fair interpretation of 
 the Scripture record; it has zo¢ been shown that the 
 races of men did not descend from a single pair; and 
 the point has not yet been established that God has 
 never interposed, since the creation, by his own direct 
 power in controlling the condition of the world; that 
 the sun and moon did noé stand still at the command 
 of Joshua; that Christ did noé still the tempest by a 
 word; that he did ot recall Lazarus to life; that he 
 did mot himself rise from the dead and ascend to 
 heaven. Science has not yet brought these alleged 
 facts within its range, nor has it demonstrated that 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 109 
 
 these facts could not be proved by proper historical 
 testimony. These are noé settled points in Science, as 
 Kepler’s great laws of motion are, or Newton’s law of 
 gravitation is. When they become such, and not till 
 then, will there be a real conflict between Science and 
 the teachings of the Bible. So matters stand on this 
 subject in this nineteenth century. 
 
 The course of events thus far, while it has removed 
 many imaginary things from the Bible, and relieved us 
 from much that encumbered and embarrassed the argu- 
 ment for the truth of revelation—as it has removed 
 many imaginary things from the secular history of the 
 past, and has relieved us from many things that per- 
 plexed and embarrassed us in regard to past events— 
 has, as yet, removed none of the vea/ things affirmed in 
 the Bible, and which, by just laws of exegesis, we are 
 bound to maintain, as, on the parallel subject of secu- 
 lar history, it has not affected, and can not affect, the 
 real events which belong to history. The future we 
 can not anticipate. The past, at least,is secure. What 
 Science is yet to do it is not ours to foresee. How this 
 matter is to stand in the centuries to come, is, of course, 
 beyond our positive knowledge. Whether Science can 
 eliminate miracles as it has done sorcery, and magic, 
 and necromancy, and astrology from the world, is to 
 be the inquiry of future ages; a field of fair conflict 
 between the friends and the enemies of revelation. 
 History in its great facts is safe thus far; religion in 
 its great facts is safe also—each with equal confidence 
 may be safely intrusted to that Great Presiding Spirit 
 that has preserved both up to the present time. It 
 will remain, in a subsequent part of this course of Lec- 
 tures—it may be demanded of us—it can not be evaded 
 —to inquire whether the principles of Science which 
 
110 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 have swept away so much once deemed marvelous and 
 supernatural, will sweep away the claim of all that is 
 miraculous; whether, in view of all that it has done, a 
 miracle can be properly regarded as a historical subject 
 of belief. That point will be reserved for a special sub- 
 sequent Lecture. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 111 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE EVIDENCE OF CHRISTIANITY FROM ITS PROP- 
 AGATION. 
 
 THERE are two forms of religion in the world which 
 owe their present existence and influence to the fact 
 that they were at first propagated by direct effort. 
 They are Christianity and Mohammedism. In this re- 
 spect they stand by themselves. The religion of the 
 Jews had its origin with their own nation, and grew up 
 with themselves, and identified itself with all their leg- 
 - islative, municipal, and military regulations—a growth 
 among themselves, and not an accretion from surround- 
 ing nations. They indeed sought to make proselytes, 
 but they never sought or expected to make their relig- 
 ion a universal religion. Moses labored to make the 
 Jewish people a religious people, not to convert the sur- 
 rounding nations, and at no period of their history did 
 the Hebrews. ever conceive the idea of converting the 
 whole world to their faith. It was the religion of the 
 Jewish nation, not the religion of the world. 
 
 The Egyptian religion was limited to the Egyptians, 
 the Chaldean to the Chaldeans, the Assyrian to the As- 
 syrians. It was a fundamental idea in the ancient Pa- 
 gan religions that every nation had its own gods, and 
 that those gods were to be respected by other nations. 
 The Greeks did not go forth to convert the world to 
 their Jupiter, Juno, or Mars, but were content that all 
 - others should do honor as they chose to their own na- 
 tional gods. In the Pantheon at Rome the idea was 
 
 
 
112 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 embodied in the very name and conception of the tem- 
 ple, that all the gods of the nations were to be recog- 
 nized, and that all might have a place there provided 
 they did not disturb or displace those who were rec- 
 ognized as the Roman divinities. 
 
 Christianity and Mohammedism, however, each alike 
 started out on a different idea. They were to be prop- 
 agated. They were to overstep the narrow limits of 
 the people among whom they had their origin. They 
 were, wherever they went, to displace other religions. 
 They were to convert heathen temples to churches or 
 mosques, or, if this could not be done, they were to dis- 
 robe their priests, and to empty them of worshipers, 
 and to leave them tenantless. They were to throw 
 down all altars; stop the effusion. of blood in sacrifice 
 every where; change all laws that recognized the ex- 
 istence of more gods than one; set up the worship of 
 one God, and bring the nations of the earth under the 
 influence of a “ book-revelation”—the Bible or the Ko- 
 ran. They were both to be diffused by direct effort; 
 and the idea of propagation was a fundamental idea in 
 both—the one by the sword, the other by the influence 
 of truth and love. 
 
 They began much alike. Both had their origin in 
 an individual in whom alone was the germ of the relig- 
 ion—was all the religion; and both those founders of 
 the respective systems were obscure—both poor, both 
 uneducated, both without powerful alliances or ar- 
 mies. Neither of the religions was a development from 
 any previous form of religion, or an outgrowth of exist- 
 ing views among men, or of any prevailing form of civ- 
 ilization, and neither of them would have started up 
 as such an outgrowth or development in Persia in the 
 time of Cyrus, or in Greece in the age of Pericles, or in 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. FIs 
 
 Rome in the time of the Antonines, or of any nation 
 now, if we can suppose that the existing nations had 
 their present forms of civilization or -art without any 
 religion. Both had very small beginnings, and weari- 
 some weeks and months, and even years, passed away 
 before they became so rooted or accumulated such force 
 as to affect the established institutions, or to excite ap- 
 prehension among the friends of existing systems of re- 
 ligion. The founders of both experienced similar opposi- 
 tion from their own families and friends, and made their 
 first converts among strangers; and both were greatly 
 persecuted. The one, to save his life in infancy, was 
 borne to a distant land, and was often obliged to resort 
 to measures derived from his higher nature to save his 
 life, and at last was put to death on a cross; the other 
 was compelled to flee from the place of his birth and 
 from his home, and to make a distant city the seat and 
 centre of his efforts to spread his religion. Neither 
 lived to see much more than the beginning of the diffu- 
 sion of their religion, and the religion of both was 
 _ spread with rapidity over extended regions only when 
 they were no longer upon the earth to direct its diffu- 
 sion in person. Millions of human beings have been 
 brought under the power of each; each has lived, since 
 its origin, through the revolutions of many centuries, 
 and amid all the advances which the world has made in 
 science and in art; each has given laws to nations; has 
 founded governments; has changed long-existing dynas- 
 ties; has controlled kings on their thrones; has organ- 
 ized vast armies; has changed, if not made permanent, 
 the customs of the world. The banners of each in war 
 have waved over numberless battle-fields, often when 
 contending alone with other nations; often when ar- 
 rayed against each other; seldom in union against a 
 
114 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 common foe. Both, though often attacked with the ut- 
 most violence, yet survive, and now together more 
 deeply influence the destiny of the world than all other 
 forms of religion combined. 
 
 Both these religions can not be true; both can not 
 have been propagated because they were true. An ar- 
 gument for the divine origin of either from the fact of 
 its propagation that would be equally applicable to 
 both would prove nothing, and a very material question 
 occurs whether there zs any such peculiarity in the 
 manner and fact of the propagation of the one as would 
 demonstrate its divine origin, which would not be ap- 
 plicable to the other; or whether the mere propagation 
 of a system of philosophy or religion, under any circum- 
 stances, proves that it is from God. 
 
 Without comparing the evidence in regard to the 
 two, and reserving the remarks which distinguish and 
 separate the two, so far as the argument is concerned, 
 to the closing part of the Lecture, I shall endeavor, as 
 its main purpose, to set before you the argument for the 
 divine origin of Christianity as derived from its propa- 
 gation. 
 
 This I shall do by illustrating the following points: 
 
 I. That the religion was propagated ; 
 
 II. That the evidence or facts on which this was done 
 was sufficient to account for its propagation, or to se- 
 cure its propagation if such evidence existed; and, 
 
 Ill. That the fact of the propagation of Christianity, 
 in the manner in which it occurred, can be explained 
 only on the supposition that there was such evidence, 
 and that the religion is from God. 
 
 I. The first point, as I have announced it—That the 
 religion was propagated—has so far the appearance of 
 being a truism that you may be surprised, perhaps, that 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 115 
 
 Ihave so’far reflected on your understandings as to sub- 
 mit it as a proposition to be proved or even illustrated. 
 I mean by it, however, more than may strike you on its 
 mere announcement. . 
 
 What I mean by it, and what is to be illustrated in 
 this argument is, (1.) That it was not a development 
 from any previous system of religion or from the state 
 of the world; and (2.) That it was propagated in the 
 manner and on the grounds which are stated in the 
 New Testament. 
 
 (1.) It was not a development from any previous sys- 
 tem of religion or from the state of the world. 
 
 That there are things existing in society which are 
 of the proper nature of development from something 
 previously existing, or which have sprung into being 
 because the state of the world demanded them, can not: 
 be called in question; and it can not be denied that 
 progressive civilization seems to follow, in some re- 
 spects, the laws of development in the vegetable king- 
 dom. It would be a curious and not unprofitable in- 
 quiry to ascertain what were the germs of the present 
 civilizations of the world, and by what laws they have 
 been unfolded. Society is thus @ growth, formed of ac- 
 cretions from without, as plants are, in which the prin- 
 ciple of life in the germ attracts to itself, and moulds 
 into the appropriate shape, under its own laws of life, 
 whatever is necessary to its full and perfect form. The 
 race thus, like the plant, is one, and the progress is stead- 
 ily and indefinitely onward.* It is, in itself, a fair ques- 
 tion whether all existing things in society can be traced 
 
 * ‘Social advancement is as completely under the control of natu- 
 ral law as is bodily growth. The life of an individual is a miniature 
 of the life of a nation.”—Dr. Draper, History of the Intellectual De- 
 velopment of Europe. Preface. 
 
116 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 to this law of development or progress; and ‘it is per- 
 fectly fair for any advocate of that theory to endeavor 
 to show that Christianity, so far as it indicates progress, 
 comes under that law. So far, in fact, has the principle 
 now adverted to been carried, that it has been held that 
 the great minds which have been thrown up from time 
 to time to meet great emergencies in the world, and to 
 lift the race to a higher level, have, in fact, been created 
 by circumstances, and are simply a development of 
 what may be in the germ of humanity; as the richest 
 fruit, under the highest cultivation, is but a fair devel- 
 opment of what is in the germ from which it sprang. 
 In like manner it has been held, and it is quite material 
 for infidelity to hold it, that Christianity is but a sim- 
 ple development of a state of things to which the world 
 in its progress was coming; itself, in due time, to give 
 way to some higher development that shall spring out 
 of an advanced state of society, and that will better 
 than Christianity then represent the real progress of the 
 world—“ Positivism,” or some such form of religion. 
 According to such a theory, in the words of another, 
 “Christianity arose from a happy confluence of the 
 Greek and Roman with the Hebrew civilization.” The 
 state of the world demanded a change in religion. The 
 old religions were dying or dead. The civilization of 
 the world was in advance of those religions, and they 
 must die, at any rate. But there were in them ele- 
 ments of religion representing the progress which the 
 world had made at that time, which might be min- 
 gled with the advanced principles in civilization, and 
 out of which a new system might spring that would 
 accompany the, world in its progress for many gener- 
 ations, until, it also becoming decayed and effete, and 
 falling behind some distant age, some higher form of 
 
/ EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. iy; 
 
 religion would arise which would better represent an 
 advanced period of the world. 
 
 Whether this is so is a fair question, and yet it would 
 appear not to be of difficult solution. 
 
 It may be remarked in the outset that Christianity 
 has not the appearance of being adevelopment. It had 
 no growth. It was perfect at the commencement as it 
 came from its Founder, and as it was explained in the 
 New Testament. It became fixed at once, and it has 
 not changed. It has no doctrines now which it had not 
 eighteen hundred years ago; and it had none then 
 which it has not now, for it has lost none by the way. 
 One of our main embarrassments in regard to it, as com- 
 pared with the progress of the world, as we shall see in a 
 subsequent Lecture, is that it is a fixed religion, not sus- 
 ceptible of change or modification. 'To that our adver- 
 saries hold us; from that we can not retreat. The form 
 of Minerva was not more complete at her birth than 
 Christianity was, and its form was no more susceptible 
 of growing beauty than was hers. In proof that these 
 things were so, I submit the following remarks: 
 
 (a) Christianity was not a development of the Pagan 
 religions. It sprang up in a land remote from those re- 
 ligions; it has no features in common with them; it 
 came, so far as they had life, into immediate and deadly 
 collision with them. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, 
 the Persian, the Greek, the Roman mythologies—which 
 of them or what part of them is represented by Chris- 
 tianity ? The temples, the priesthood, the sacrifices, the 
 morals—which of them is represented by Christianity ? 
 Which of them welcomed its coming—which of them 
 sprang forward to embrace it—which of them opened 
 its temples for it? 
 
 (6) Christianity was not developed from Judaism, 
 
118 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 unless it be in the sense, if the comparison be not too 
 low, in which the chrysalis is “ developed” into the but- 
 terfly, and the new insect emerges into a new form of 
 being, the former life—the groveling caterpillar— 
 dying altogether. Judaism died when Christianity 
 appeared. Unlike the expiring worm, indeed, with the 
 little life it had, it evinced a deadly antagonism to the 
 new form—the new religion—and then it, like that 
 worm, expired. Its altars were overthrown ; its priests 
 Were disrobed; its temple was razed to the founda- 
 tions; its sacrifices were rendered unmeaning, and 
 ceased forever; its political economy was ended; its 
 people were scattered to the ends of the earth, to be 
 gathered as a nation no more. We as Christians, in- 
 deed, admit, in owr sense of the term, that.Christianity 
 was “developed” in a certain sense from the Jewish re- 
 ligion; that the one had the same origin as the other; 
 that the same life-blood flowed through both ; that the 
 Messiah of the one was adumbrated by the rites of the - 
 other; and that the one was, in the purpose of God, 
 preparatory and introductory to the other. But this 
 is not the sense in which the enemies of Christianity 
 would say that Christianity was developed from Juda- 
 ism; and in the sense in which they use the term it is 
 in no manner true. 
 
 (c) It was not a development from the Greek philoso- 
 phy, or from the Roman philosophy, the echo of the 
 Greek. That philosophy, in common with other forms 
 of philosophy, has, indeed, at times greatly influenced 
 and modified Christianity as it has been held in the 
 world; but the systems have been kept distinct, and 
 have never been confounded. With both these before 
 us now—for the records of the Greek and Roman phi- 
 losophy have been, from some cause, almost as carefully 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 119 
 
 preserved as the records of Christianity—we are en- 
 abled to make a comparison between what Socrates, 
 Pythagoras, Zeno, and Plato taught, and what Jesus 
 taught; and no germ of the latter is to be found in the 
 former. It is impossible to take the teachings of the 
 Greeks, and to show how the peculiarities of the Chris- 
 tian system could have grown out of them; and it is 
 morally certain that if Christ had not appeared in per- 
 son, and if the world had retained its possession of the 
 Greek philosophy, such a system as that of Christian- 
 ity would have been forever unknown to men. From 
 some cause, the Greek philosophy has quite as much 
 affinity with the religion of the Koran as it has with 
 the religion of the New Testament ; for it was at Bag- 
 ‘dad, in the time of the Caliphs, that it was preserved, 
 when a dark night had settled down on Christian Eu- 
 rope; it was at Bagdad, in the palmy days of the relig- 
 ion of Mohammed, that it was most carefully studied ; 
 it was from Bagdad, as, in part, the result of the Cru- 
 sades, that it was given again to Europe. 
 
 (2) Nor was it a development of the civilization 
 which the world had attained at the time when it ap- 
 peared. Christianity is not Greek civilization; it is 
 not Roman it is not Egyptian; it is not Persian; it is 
 not Babylonian. In fact, the enemies of Christianity 
 tell us that it set itself much against the civilization of 
 the world when it appeared. It enjoined peculiar man- 
 ners, and was austere, cold, dissocial, severe ; it had no 
 fine arts of its own, and it looked with disdain on the 
 arts of polished life in Greece and Rome ; it evinced no 
 affinity for poetry, painting, or statuary, but looked 
 with distrust on them all; it attempted no rivalship of 
 the works of the great Greek masters, but aroused their 
 hostility by eschewing and avoiding them; its own 
 
120 “LECTURES ON THE 
 
 works of art of that early age—needful for their public 
 assemblies, and needful to mark the places where mar- 
 tyrs slept—as in the catacombs of Rome, are of the rud- 
 est structure; and its connection with the arts—poetry, 
 painting, sculpture, architecture — was of the slowest 
 growth, and was the work of late, and not of early 
 years. Moreover, there has been a deep conviction in 
 the minds of many of its best friends that the extensive, 
 cultivation of the fine arts is not conducive to the 
 growth of a pure Christianity, but that such a cultiva- 
 tion is, from some cause, closely connected, in fact, with 
 a deterioration in doctrine, and with corruption in prac- 
 tical life. Christianity at its beginning was what it 
 has ever been since. Less by far than any other sys- 
 tem that has influenced mankind has it been the result 
 of development and growth. 
 
 (ec) Nor is it true that it is a development of civ- 
 ilization as the world has advanced since its Found- 
 er lived, and that it owes its present form to the 
 progress of the race. In one* breath we are told by 
 Comte and his followers that it falls behind the age; 
 that it is effete and obsolete; that the world now, in 
 its state of civilization, needs a better system, and 
 that it is the business of philosophy to reveal such a 
 system; in the next breath, by Buckle and his friends, © 
 that it is the result of the progressive civilization 
 of the world, and has grown naturally out of the un- 
 foldings of the germs of civilized life. “Can a fount- 
 ain send forth at the same place sweet water and bit- 
 ter? Can the fig-tree bear olive-berries ? either a vine 
 figs? So can no fountain both yield salt water and 
 fresh.” 
 
 Neither of these suppositions is true. Christianity 
 has not outlived its influence on the civilization of the 
 
~ 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 121 
 
 world, nor has it obtained its influence because it is a 
 development of the germs of civilization which the 
 world in its progress is unfolding. 
 
 In one word, Christianity is not a “ development” 
 at all. It was mature and perfect at the beginning. 
 Few of the great things which influence our world mor- 
 * ally or physically are the result of “ development.” In 
 the old geological periods, as we are now instructed, 
 one was in no sense a “ development” from the former ; 
 nor did the old in any form travel over into the new 
 in an improved and more perfect growth. The old 
 races were swept off absolutely, and new successive 
 creations of plants and animals were brought upon the 
 changed earth. Man at last appeared, not as a devel- 
 opment, but as a new creation. So geology now teaches 
 us. In the progress of society, of what is the printing- 
 press a development? the railroad—the magnetic tele- 
 graph? Of what was the mind of Shakspeare, of Ba- 
 con, of Newton a development? What was there in 
 the intellect of John Shakspeare, originally a glover, 
 and then a skinner and wool-stapler* in Henly Street, 
 in Stratford-on-Avon, that developed itself into Hamlet, 
 and Lear, and Macbeth—that, in the language of Hugh 
 Miller, “set such great thoughts bounding through the 
 world?” What was there in the obscure and humble 
 parson, the father of Newton, that “developed” itself 
 into the science of fluxions, and the discovery of the 
 great law of gravitation ? 
 
 (2.) The facts in regard to the propagation of Chris- 
 tianity are well settled in history. 
 
 (a) It had its origin with Jesus of Nazareth. That 
 fact is as clear as any fact in history; it is so clear that 
 no one can doubt it; it is so clear that it has never been 
 
 * Ulrici, Dramatic Art of Shakspeare, p. 70. 
 ¥ 
 
122 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 denied. Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical person- 
 age. What he was, who he was, whence he came, what 
 was the object of his coming, are other questions ; but 
 that he lived, that he taught, that he died—that he was 
 born in the time of Augustus Cesar, and died in the 
 time of Tiberius—are points settled by all history. In- 
 fidelity has not ventured to call these things in ques- 
 tion. And the most learned and able forms of skepti- 
 cism have been employed in showing how, these facts 
 being assumed, the growth and spread of Christianity 
 can be explained. The Jesus of Strauss is a real histor- 
 ical personage, around whom his disciples and followers 
 have drawn the myths that have grown up into Chris- 
 tianity as it is; the Jesus of Renan is a real personage 
 —an uneducated peasant, ignorant of history, of geog- 
 raphy, of literature—unacquainted even with the his- 
 tory of the Herods of his own country, and a stranger 
 to the history of Rome, yet a young man of remarkable 
 and unparalleled genius, far beyond his own age, or any 
 age—ultimately, as springing from the exertion of his 
 own unconscious powers, conceiving the idea that he 
 was the Messiah, and was, in a form before unknown, 
 to set up the worship of the true God, and to change 
 the religion of the world; the Jesus of Gibbon is a real. 
 personage, the influence of whose life and opinions on 
 the world is to be explained in the best way in which 
 it can be. 
 
 (0) This religion was’ propagated mainly by very 
 humble men; by men who were uneducated; by men 
 for the most part fishermen—having no original supe- 
 riority above other fishermen on the shores of the Lake 
 of Galilee, a rude and uncultivated region, or above 
 fishermen as they are found now around Cape Cod or 
 on the Banks of Newfoundland—among the last of men 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 123 
 
 that would be selected for the work of religious mis- 
 sions, or for founding a religion, or for measuring 
 strength with the philosophy of the world: men with- 
 out rank, or position, or influence, except as they created 
 it in the effort to spread the new religion; men belong- 
 ing to a despised race—a race known indeed beyond the 
 boundaries of their own narrow country, but mostly as 
 slaves, and characterized by Tacitus as “the enemies of 
 the human race;” men belonging to a nation that had 
 produced nothing in sculpture, in painting, in philoso- 
 phy, in arts, or in arms, to make them known abroad; 
 men belonging to a race which heathen poets conde- 
 scended to notice only with contempt.* 
 
 (c) The facts in the history of its propagation are as 
 well settled as any other facts in history—so well set- 
 tled as to admit of no skepticism in regard to them. 
 There were no armies; there were no military leaders. 
 The conquests of Christianity were not, certainly until 
 it ascended the throne of the Cesars, the result of 
 bloody victories. The facts in regard to its propaga- 
 tion have been traced with great learning, impartiality, 
 and fidelity by Mr. Gibbon, and accord, as stated by 
 him, with all the other records that have been handed 
 down to us. They have not been called in question by 
 Strauss or Renan, and infidelity has not ventured, if it 
 had any desire to do it, to found its attacks on Chris- 
 tianity on a denial of those facts. It was in Mr. Gib- 
 bon’s path to state those facts, and he has done it with- 
 out hesitation, and without an attempt to pervert them. 
 In fact, he has traced that history in regard to the prop- 
 agation of Christianity as the result of the labors of 
 humble and unknown men, without influence or arms, 
 as faithfully and impartially as he has described. the 
 
 * Credat Judzus Apella.—Zorace. 
 
124 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 character of the Antonines or Julian, or as he has traced 
 the history of the spread of the religion of Mohammed. 
 
 (2) The religion was propagated on the ground of 
 miracles; on the affirmation that Christ rose from the 
 dead; on the belief of the facts as they are stated in 
 the New Testament. Whatever may be said about 
 the truth on any of these points—whether, for example, 
 Christ actually rose from the dead, or whether the hal- 
 lucination of a woman has taught mankind to believe 
 this, as Renan alleges: “The strong imagination of 
 Mary Magdalene,” says he, “has enacted a principal 
 part. Divine power of love ! sacred moments in which 
 the passion of a hallucinated woman gives to the world 
 a resurrected God”*—yet there can be no doubt that 
 the religion was, in fact, propagated on the ground of 
 the belief of the facts stated in the New Testament, and 
 that if these had noé been believed, the religion could 
 not, and would not have been spread over the world. 
 The New Testament is full of this, and history is full 
 of it. Mr. Gibbon did not venture to call this fact in 
 question, though he has stated it, as it became him to 
 do with his views of religion, in connection with the 
 fact, as undoubtedly true also, that for ages the belief 
 prevailed in the Church that miracles continued to be 
 wrought, and that “that belief must have conduced very 
 frequently to the conversion of infidels.”+ The only 
 point which I am now making is, that the religion was 
 propagated and received in the world on the ground of 
 the belief that the miracles of the New Testament were 
 true, and especially on the belief that Christ rose from 
 the dead. 
 
 * Life of Jesus, p. 357. 
 + See his statement in full in vol. i., p. 264-267, of his History, 
 Harper’s ed., 1829. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 125 
 
 If. The second inquiry is, Whether the supposed evi- 
 dence of the divine origin of Christianity, on which it 
 was propagated, was of such a nature as to account for 
 the facts in regard to its spread in the world ; to justi- 
 Jy men in embracing it; and to explain the causes of 
 the great changes which it made. If those evidences 
 were real, would they explain the facts which followed ; 
 would they be such as to show that the action of the 
 world in the case was right and wise; would it be true 
 that in subsequent times the race could look upon this 
 part of its history with complacency and approbation ? 
 for there is much, very much, in the past history of man 
 on which we can not thus look, and which, for the hon- 
 or of our nature, the historian of human affairs would 
 be glad to forget. 
 
 It will not be practicable or necessary to dwell long 
 on this part of the subject. It is, perhaps, the part of 
 the argument which I am submitting to you which 
 would be most readily yielded by those who deny the 
 truth of the Christian religion. 
 
 What is to be supposed in the case is this, that the 
 things which are revealed in the New Testament actu- 
 ally occurred as they are stated there, and that credi- 
 ble proof that they did actually occur was furnished to 
 mankind—so furnished that the world actually received 
 it as credible proof. Let it be supposed, therefore, that 
 the things narrated in the New Testament actually took 
 place, and that the world believed this—that Jesus 
 lived; that he was born and reared in the manner re- 
 lated; that he taught; that he proclaimed the doc- 
 trines which are attributed to him; that he was pure 
 and holy in his character; that he answered the de- 
 scription of a long series of ancient predictions in re- 
 gard to the Messiah; that he healed the sick by mira- 
 
126 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 cle; that he opened the eyes of the blind, and caused 
 the lame man to leap as an hart; that he cast out dev- 
 ils; that he raised the dead; that he was put to death 
 on a cross; that the earth trembled, and that the sun 
 withdrew his beams when he died ; that he himself rose 
 from the dead and ascended to heaven—let these things 
 be supposed, and let them be credited by mankind. 
 The question then is, whether there was any thing in 
 the actual reception of the system which can not be 
 explained on this supposition; any thing that can not 
 be vindicated and justified as honorable to human na- 
 ture? Is there any thing in it which the world ought 
 to desire to forget ? Is there any thing in reference to 
 the actual changes which Christianity has made in the 
 affairs of nations which the historian of human affairs 
 would be at a loss in accounting for? Is there any 
 thing in the reception of Christianity which would 
 place the race on the same humiliating ground on which 
 the past history of the world in regard to sorcery, and 
 witchcraft, and necromancy, and imposture in general, 
 has placed it ? 
 
 Nowhere would the explanation of things be so easy; 
 nowhere would the historian have more occasion to 
 - congratulate himself than in assuming these as facts in 
 the explanation of the history of the world. How easy 
 would have been the task of Mr. Gibbon, how much 
 hard labor would it have saved him, if he had “seen 
 his way clear” to admit these things to be true! 
 
 I may be able, in the proper place, to show, that if the 
 things attributed to Mohammed in history actually oc- 
 curred, or were real historical events, the changes which 
 were consequent on the introduction of his religion into 
 the world are susceptible of easy explanation. I at- 
 tempt no more than this in the remarks now made in 
 regard to the establishment of Christianity. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. bbe Are 
 
 (1.) These things were relied on: that Jesus lived; 
 that he uttered great truths about God; that he taught 
 the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, the resur- 
 rection. of the dead, and the final judgment; that he 
 wrought miracles in amazing numbers; that he raised 
 the dead; that he himself rose from the dead; that he 
 ascended to heaven; that he made an atonement for the 
 sins of the world. The system never would have been 
 preached at all if these things had not been believed to 
 have occurred; it never would have been embraced if 
 it had not been believed that they were true. The 
 world did believe them; the world acted on the belief. 
 Mr. Gibbon could not deny this; no man can now deny 
 it. The reliance in spreading the Gospel was not on 
 military power; on philosophy; on superior claims in 
 science; on a higher civilization; on appeals to the pas- 
 sions of men; on the promise of temporal advantages ; 
 on necromancy, juggling, fortune-telling, or sorcery ; on 
 new theories about government and law. All the ac- 
 counts agree in this, that it was not on these things, but 
 on the belief of the truth of the facts of Christianity as 
 we have them in the records of the New Testament now. 
 
 (2.) The old systems of religion sat loosely on the 
 world, and the world was, in a certain sense, waiting 
 for a new religion. This was undoubtedly the case 
 in Judea, for the power of the Jewish religion was 
 waning, and the nation was, on principle and in ac- 
 cordance with their prophecies, waiting for an impor- 
 tant change in religion when their Messiah should ap- 
 pear. The same thing was substantially true elsewhere. 
 There is undoubted truth in a remark which Mr. Gib- 
 bon makes, that the systems of religion prevailing in 
 the Roman empire were all “regarded by philosophers 
 as equally false, by statesmen as equally necessary, and 
 
128 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 by the mass of the people as equally true.” It is also 
 an undoubted fact, established on the well-known testi- 
 mony of the writers of that age, that there was a gen- 
 eral expectation prevailing that some remarkable per- 
 son would soon appear whose coming would materially 
 change the condition of the world. Thus Suetonius 
 (ch. iv.) says: “An ancient and settled persuasion pre- 
 vailed throughout the East that the fates had decreed 
 some one to proceed out of Judea who should attain 
 universal empire.” 'Thus Tacitus (Annals, 5, 13), says: 
 ““Many were persuaded that it was contained in the 
 books of their priests that at that very time the East 
 should prevail, and that some one should proceed from 
 Judea, and should possess the dominion.” It is not, in- 
 deed, to be maintained that this expectation was uni- 
 versal, nor is it to be affirmed that Paganism or Judaism 
 had lost their power altogether, for there was still vi- 
 tality enough in both to arouse themselves to desperate 
 efforts to destroy the new religion when it appeared, 
 in furious storms of persecution. 
 
 Yet, that the power of the religions of the world as 
 controlling mankind was waning, if not almost extinct, 
 is the undoubted testimony of history. Mr. Gibbon, 
 speaking of the influence of the prevailing religions on 
 the public mind, makes the following, among other re- 
 marks: “ We are sufficiently acquainted with the emi- 
 nent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero, and 
 the first Ceesars, with their actions, their characters, and 
 their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this 
 life was never regulated by any serious conviction of 
 the rewards and punishments. of a future state” (vol. 
 1, p. 260). “The general system of their mythology,” 
 says he, “ was unsupported by any solid proofs; and the 
 wisest among the Pagans had already disclaimed its 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 129 
 > 
 
 usurped authority.”"—JZbid. “The doctrine of a future - 
 state,” he adds, “was scarcely considered among the 
 devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamen- 
 tal article of faith.”—JZdbzd. In connection with these 
 remarks, and as illustrating the religious state of the 
 world when Christianity appeared, and as accounting, 
 in some measure, for its reception by mankind, he makes, 
 also, the following important observations: 
 
 “When Christianity appeared in the world, even 
 these faint and imperfect impressions” [respecting re- 
 ligion in the prevailing form] “had lost much of their 
 original power. Human reason, which by its unassisted 
 strength is incapable of perceiving the mysteries of 
 faith, had already obtained an easy triumph over the 
 folly of Paganism; and when Tertullian or Lactantius 
 employ their labors in exposing its falsehood and ex- 
 travagance, they are obliged to transcribe the eloquence 
 of Cicero or the wit of Lucian. The contagion of these 
 skeptical writings had been diffused far beyond the 
 number of their readers. The fashion of incredulity 
 was communicated from the philosopher to the man of 
 pleasure or business, from the noble to the plebeian, and 
 from the master to the menial slave who waited at his 
 table, and who eagerly listened to the freedom of his 
 conversation. On public occasions the philosophic part 
 of mankind affected to treat with respect and decency 
 the religious institutions of their country; but their se- 
 cret contempt penetrated through the thin and awk- 
 ward disguise; and even the people, when they discov- 
 ered that their deities were rejected and derided by 
 those whose rank or understanding they were accus- 
 tomed to reverence, were filled with doubts and appre- 
 hensions concerning the truth of those doctrines, to 
 which they had yielded the most implicit belief. The 
 
 2 
 
130 LECTURES ON THE 
 e 
 
 decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very numerous 
 portion of human kind to the danger of a painful and 
 comfortless situation. A state of skepticism and sus- 
 pense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the 
 practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude, 
 that if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the 
 loss of their pleasing vision. Their love of the marvel- 
 ous and supernatural, their curiosity with regard to fu- 
 ture events, and their strong propensity to extend their 
 hopes and fears beyond the limits of the visible world, 
 were the principal causes which favored the establish- 
 ment of polytheism. So urgent on the vulgar is the 
 necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of 
 mythology will most probably be succeeded by the in- 
 troduction of some other mode of superstition. Some 
 deities of a more recent and fashionable cast might 
 soon have occupied the deserted temples of Jupiter and 
 Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the wisdom of Provy- 
 idence [szc] had not interposed a genuine revelation, 
 fitted to inspire the most rational esteem and convic- 
 tion, while, at the same time, it was adorned with all 
 that could attract the curiosity, the wonder, and the 
 veneration of the people. In their actual disposition, 
 as many were almost disengaged from their artificial 
 prejudices, but equally susceptible and desirous of a de- 
 vout attachment, an object much less deserving would 
 have been sufficient to fill the vacant place in their 
 hearts, and to gratify the uncertain eagerness of their 
 passions. Those who are inclined to pursue this reflec- 
 tion, instead of viewing with astonishment the rapid 
 progress of Christianity, will perhaps be surprised that 
 its success was not still more rapid and still more uni- 
 versal,”* 
 * Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 280, 281. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 131 
 
 (3.) The new system contained statements on points 
 which men had desired to know, and on which they 
 despaired of obtaining information. from any other 
 source. We shall see in a subsequent Lecture (Lecture 
 IX.) that Christianity meets and satisfies original wants 
 in man—wants in his very nature as a religious being, 
 and wants as a fallen being—and that it supplies, in the 
 great sacrifice which it reveals as made for sin, what 
 men had been elsewhere seeking in vain. The remark 
 which I am now making is, that the fact that those 
 doctrines were promulgated and believed in the early 
 propagation of Christianity, will go far to explain the 
 fact that the religion was embraced, or to account for 
 the success attending the efforts for its dissemination. 
 Mr. Gibbon has himself shown this with great skill in 
 reference to the doctrines of the immortality of the soul 
 and of a future state, for he has made this one of the 
 five causes which will explain the fact of the propaga- 
 tion of the Christian religion.* The point which I am 
 now making is, that what was true of those doctrines 
 is true of other doctrines of Christianity also. It is no 
 less a fact that they met the wants and aspirations of 
 men. And as we know that the religion was propa- 
 gated and embraced on the belief of these truths, it fol- 
 lows that if it is assumed that they were true, the fact 
 would go far to explain the reception of the religion in 
 the world. The new religion met a conscious want of 
 men in the failure of polytheism, and was embraced in 
 part because it met such a want. ‘That there is a 
 God, one God; that there is a Savior; that the soul 
 is immortal; that there is a future state; that the par- 
 don of sin may be obtained, are truths which men had 
 panted to know, but which had been found in no other 
 
 * Decline and Fall, vol. i., p. 259-264. 
 
132 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 system, and which they had ceased to hope could be 
 obtained in connection with philosophy or polytheism. 
 (4.) Men will sooner or later yield to that which 
 seems to them to have the force of truth, or which they 
 believe to be true. The foundation of this remark is, 
 that there is that in the human mind, as we shall see 
 in another part of this course (Lecture [X.), which cor- 
 responds with truth, or which is designed to secure the 
 reception and influence of truth in the world, and this 
 principle or law of our nature will explain the progress 
 which truth on any subject has made. It is, moreover, 
 the mést cheering thing in regard to the future, for it 
 makes it certain that truth on all subjects, religion as 
 well as others, will ultimately be triumphant. Itis tobe 
 admitted that there may be that in the mind itself which 
 will temporarily resist this. There may be the preju- 
 dices of education, of bigotry, of country, of custom, of 
 party, and of religion— the “idols” of the “tribe,” of 
 the “cave,” of the “forum,” and of the “theatre,” as 
 Lord Bacon calls them*—but those prejudices truth 
 will overcome. ‘There may be laws, customs, and vest- 
 ed interests; there may be the influence of a priest- 
 hood; there may be the resistance of a false philoso- 
 phy; there may be all the power derived from hered- 
 itary rank» there may be all that there is in the pas- » 
 sions of men, and the love of ease and indulgence; 
 there may be all the power of a gross immorality, sanc- 
 tioned by religion, by custom, and by law; and there 
 may be all the power of a state or empire. All this 
 Christianity encountered ; most of this any new form of 
 religion, or any new opinion in philosophy, will be likely 
 to encounter in the world. Truth may seem to begin 
 
 * Idola tribus, idola specus, idola fori, idola theatri.—Novum Or- 
 ganum, lib. i., aphor. xxxix. 
 
EVIDENCES OF OBMRISTIANITY. 133 
 
 its way as by beating against adamantine walls. It 
 may appear to accomplish no more than the ocean does 
 with its raging billows against rock-bound coasts, or 
 along the pebbly shore. It makes the attack, and then 
 retires. If the pebble is removed a little inward, it 
 will come back again; if the sand is washed a little, it 
 at once fills up; if the solid rocks tremble, they still 
 stand firm. Truth may seem to be stayed, and to die 
 out; but it will not. 
 ‘*'Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again; 
 The eternal years of God are hers.” 
 
 Time only is needed for its triumph. In due time it 
 will be in the ascendant; and, great as was the oppo- 
 sition which Christianity met when first announced to 
 the world, yet it did triumph, and the principle now 
 laid down will account for the fact that it triumphed. 
 The same principle, also, will account for the fact that 
 it is kept up in the world; and the same principle 
 makes it absolutely certain that it will ultimately pre- 
 vail all over the earth. 
 
 _ (5.) A belief in miracles will convince men of the 
 truth of a religion which they are wrought to estab- 
 lish, and faith in the miracles of the New Testament 
 was one of the main grounds on which the system was 
 embraced. The process of argument by which this is 
 proved is a very brief one. It is simply that the human 
 mind is so made that it can not believe that the laws 
 of nature would be set aside to confirm a falsehood or 
 to commend an impostor. Whatever may be true in 
 regard to the converse of this proposition, whether the 
 human mind is so made that it can believe that the 
 laws of nature will be set aside to confirm a true sys- 
 tem of religion, or to commend a true embassador from 
 heaven to the world—which is now the great question 
 
134 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 in our conflict with scientific infidelity, yet there is a 
 universal opinion—men can not believe otherwise—that 
 God would not, and could not, interpose in this man- 
 ner in behalf of an impostor and a false system of re- 
 ligion. Ifthe dead are raised, and if men believe that 
 they are raised, then they will believe also that he who 
 does this is invested with special power by God, and 
 has a special commission from him, for created power 
 does not raise the dead, 
 
 Mr. Gibbon has been at considerable pains (vol. 1, p. 
 264-267) to illustrate the fact that “supernatural gifts, 
 even in this life, were ascribed to the Christians above 
 the rest of mankind,” and “must have conduced to 
 their own comfort, and very frequently to the convic- 
 tion of infidels ;” and he has made it a point to consid- 
 er when these marvelous powers ceased in the Church. 
 Mr. Lecky, with a different purpose, and with great 
 ability, has engaged in the inquiry when miracles really 
 ceased in the Church, and has described the prevailing 
 state of mind on the subject at the present time (His- 
 tory of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p. 155-202) ; but, 
 whenever it ceased, no one can doubt, not even Mr. 
 Gibbon, that the deléef that such miracles were wrought 
 would account for the spread of the Gospel. Indeed, 
 that, as has been remarked, is one of the main points by 
 which he accounts for its diffusion in the Roman empire. 
 
 I can not but be justified, therefore, in the conclusion 
 which I draw from these things, that if the miracles as- 
 cribed to the Savior were wrought, this fact will ac- 
 count for the spread of Christianity in the world, and 
 will justify its reception. Somehow the mind of man 
 is so made that such a result must follow. 
 
 (6.) The belief of the things on which Christianity 
 was propagated would account for all the facts which 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 135 
 
 occurred in the conversion of men; in their forsaking 
 "sin; in their yielding to the claims of virtue; in the 
 reformations of morals and of life which followed in 
 the path of the apostles. That men did forsake their 
 sins, and that they did lead upright and pure lives un- 
 der the influence of this system, is a simple matter of 
 historic truth which no one would call in question. It 
 is apparent on the face of the New Testament; it has 
 come down to us in sacred history ; it is confirmed by 
 what occurs now; and it is established by what, with 
 some, would be a more decisive authority than all the 
 rest, that of Mr. Gibbon; for he would have given a 
 different representation of the influence of Christianity 
 on morals if God, while he allowed him to be an infidel 
 in religion, had not made him faithful as an historian. 
 Of the five causes on which, according to him, the re- 
 ception of Christianity in the world can be explained 
 without the necessity of admitting its divine origin, the 
 purity of its morals is one. It became necessary, there- 
 fore, in such an argument, to show that the early Chris- 
 tians were distinguished for their pure moral character, 
 and that Christianity, in fact, promoted the reformation 
 of mankind. This point has been elaborated by him 
 with consummate skill (vol. i., p. 267-271). If there is 
 a sneer on his face while he writes, and an underlying 
 sarcasm as his pen moves so smoothly, it is no more 
 than we were to expect; but the fact is one which 
 could not but be stated in an honest account of the De- 
 cline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The use to be 
 made of it was another question for him, as it is for us; 
 but historic verity demanded of Mr. Gibbon that the 
 statement should be made, as it is made, that “the 
 primitive Christian demonstrated his faith by his vir- 
 tues” (vol.i., p. 267), and that full credit should be given 
 
136 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 to the statement that “ when the Christians of Bithynia 
 were brought before the tribunal of the younger Pliny,” 
 they assured the proconsul that, far from being engaged 
 in any unlawful conspiracy, they were bound by a sol- 
 emn obligation to abstain from the commission of those 
 crimes which disturb the private or public peace of so- 
 ciety—from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury, and fraud” 
 (vol. 1, p. 267, 268), and that “the friends of Christian- 
 ity may acknowledge,” says he, “ without a blush, that 
 many of the most eminent saints had been before their 
 baptism the most abandoned sinners” (vol. 1, p. 267). 
 
 Now, if the system of Christianity is true, such facts 
 would occur just as it is stated that they did occur; 
 that is, it would produce precisely such effects as these, 
 for its doctrines are designed to produce such effects. 
 It needs no argument to show that these effects must 
 follow from such a system of doctrines, and the causes 
 and effects in such a case would be commensurate with 
 each other; in other words, the supposition of the truth 
 of Christianity would account for the facts in its prop- 
 agation. : . 
 
 (7.) In like manner, the supposition of the truth of 
 the facts in Christianity would, if they were believed, 
 shake the faith of men in the old systems of religion ; for, 
 if Christianity was true, these systems were of course 
 false, and men would perceive it and abandon them: 
 an event which actually occurred, and which can thus 
 be satisfactorily explained. 
 
 (8.) On the same supposition, also, all the arrange- 
 ments for a priesthood, and for the offering of sacrifices, 
 alike among the Jews and the heathen, would be seen 
 to be useless and unnecessary, and would soon lose their 
 hold on men—as was the fact. The Jewish priesthood, 
 as a priesthood, ceased almost immediately on the in- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 137 
 
 Pednction of Christianity ; the altar was overthrown, 
 the temple was demolished, and Judaism expired. The 
 same effect followed among the heathen. The fires 
 ceased to burn on the altars; the priests were disrobed; 
 the temples were closed ; the vast fabric of superstition 
 melted away. ‘This effect undoubtedly followed on the 
 preaching of Christianity, for it is attested by all his- 
 tory, and it was an effect which must follow if Chris- 
 tianity was true. The supposition that it was true, or 
 was believed to be true, will account for the effects 
 which actually followed. 
 
 (9.) On the same principle, also, it would follow that 
 all the laws made for the support of Paganism would 
 soon become obsolete, and would lose their power, so 
 that they could not be revived, and so that it would be- 
 come necessary to adjust the laws to the new order of 
 things. Ifthe religion should lose its hold on the peo- 
 ple; if the temples and the altars should be forsaken; 
 if the priesthood should become powerless; if the Lares 
 and the Penates should be treated as useless lumber; 
 if the Dies Fasti should cease to attract the people; if 
 faith in the gods should cease, then all the laws which 
 upheld those things would be unmeaning and power- 
 less, and the legislation of the state would be adjusted 
 to the new religion: an event which actually occurred, 
 and which is susceptible thus of an easy explanation. 
 
 (10.) It would also follow, however, that there would 
 probably be a conflict between the two systems, and. 
 that, while there was power on the one side and feeble- 
 ness on the other, there would be an attempt to sustain 
 the one and to destroy the other by power—the power 
 of the state; for, if Christianity was true, there was 
 that in it which would not yield to the dictation of 
 civil power; and if Paganism was expiring, it would 
 
138 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 rouse its remaining strength to put down the ww Sys- 
 tem. This actually occurred, as might have been an- 
 ticipated, and the supposition of the truth of Christian- 
 ity will account for all the persecutions which attend- 
 ed its early propagation. 
 
 (11.) And once more: The new religion, if it was 
 from God, or if it was believed to be from God, would 
 make martyrs, and the supposition of its truth will 
 account for all that occurred in the history of martyr- 
 dom. All that is recorded of their patience, calmness, 
 firmness, tenacity, obduracy, oBSTINACY, if men please, 
 can be accounted for if it be supposed that the religion 
 was from God. When Pliny wrote to the Emperor Tra- 
 jan that, having failed in the attempt to secure.a recan- 
 tation from the accused Christians, he ordered them to 
 death, because, whatever might be their general con- 
 duct, he thought that such “ inflexible obstinacy” ought 
 to be punished, he was but recording a fact that musé¢ 
 have occurred on the supposition that Christianity is 
 true.* The religion required just such sacrifices, and 
 just such firmness as Pliny described. It would pro- 
 duce just such calmness, firmness, obduracy, obstinacy, 
 among its true friends. It would make confessors and 
 martyrs. It would produce just such effects as were 
 actually produced in tens of thousands of instances in 
 the attempt to propagate it, and, therefore, the cause is ~ 
 commensurate with the effect. 
 
 * «T have taken,” says Pliny to Trajan, ‘this course with all who 
 have been brought before me and have been accused as Christians. 
 Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question 
 a second and third time, threatening also to punish them with death. 
 Such as still persisted I ordered away to be punished; for it was no 
 doubt with me, whatever might be the nature of their opinion, that 
 
 contumacy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. "—Lardner’ s 
 Works, vii., p. 23, ed. London, 1829. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 139 
 
 The supposition of the divine origin of Christianity, 
 therefore, would furnish an easy and natural solution 
 of all the recorded facts which occurred in its propaga- 
 tion, alike in regard to the great numbers that em- 
 braced it, the spirit with which it endowed them, and 
 the changes which it made in the world. 
 
 Il. The remaining inquiry is, Whether the propaga- 
 tion of Christianity can be explained on any other sup- 
 position than that it is from God. 
 
 This inquiry, to make the argument complete, would 
 properly resolve itself into two parts: the question | 
 whether the propagation of Christianity could be ex- 
 plained on the supposition that it is no¢ from God; and 
 the question whether the other system referred to in 
 the beginning of this Lecture—the only one that in this 
 respect can come in competition with it— would not 
 furnish the same argument as to a divine origin. 
 
 Can the propagation of Christianity be explained on 
 the supposition that it 1s an imposture ? 
 
 The only labored attempt to show this has been by 
 Mr. Gibbon, and he has exhausted the subject.. Noth- 
 ing has been left to be added by succeeding skeptics. 
 The explanation of the remarkable facts connected with 
 the subject of Christianity was in Mr. Gibbon’s path in 
 describing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 
 ' He could not avoid it; and we have no reason to sup- 
 pose that he wished to avoid it; for when, in the soli- 
 tude of night, in the summer-house of his garden at 
 Lausanne, he had finished his work, and laid down his 
 pen, and took several turns in a covered walk of acacias, 
 meditating on what he had done, there was, perhaps, 
 no part of the work on which he would look with more | 
 satisfaction than on the chapters (xv., xvi.) in which he 
 describes “the progress of the Christian religion, and 
 
140 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the sentiments, manners, numbers, and conditions of the 
 primitive Christians,” and “the conduct of the Roman 
 government toward the Christians.”—Vol. i., p. 249- 
 329.* 
 
 He could not avoid this inquiry. The spread of 
 Christianity was too important a fact in the history of 
 the world, and was too closely connected with the 
 downfall of the empire to permit him to pass it by; 
 and though the same facts might have been recorded 
 
 * ‘Tt was on the day, or rather night of the 27th of June, 1787, 
 between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines 
 of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying 
 down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of 
 acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and 
 the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver 
 orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was si- 
 lent. I will not describe the first emotions of joy on the recovery of 
 my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame,” etc.—Mis- 
 cellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., vol.i., p. 170, ed. Dublin, 
 1796. In illustration of the feelings of satisfaction with which Mr. 
 Gibbon regarded these two chapters of his History, I may refer to 
 his remarks in his ‘‘ Life and Writings” after those chapters had been 
 attacked by Mr. Davies, of Oxford, by Bishop Watson, by Dr. Priest- 
 ley, Sir David Dalrymple, and Dr. White, of Oxford. As the result 
 of the whole, he says, ‘‘ Had I believed that the majority of English 
 readers were so fondly attached to the name and shadow of Chris- 
 tianity; had I foreseen that the pious, the timid, and the prudent 
 would feel, or affect to feel, with such exquisite sensibility, I might 
 perhaps have softened those invidious chapters, which would create 
 many enemies, and conciliate few friends. But the shaft was shot, 
 the alarm was sounded, and I could only rejoice that, if the voice of 
 our priests was clamorous and bitter, their hands were disarmed from 
 the powers of persecution.” ‘‘ Let me frankly own that I was start- 
 led at the first discharge of ecclesiastical ordnance; but, as soon as I 
 found that this empty noise was mischievous only in the intention, 
 my fear was converted into indignation; and every feeling of indig- 
 nation or curiosity has long since subsided in pure and placid indif- 
 ference.”’—Mis. Works, vol. i., p. 153, 156. 
 
“EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 141 
 
 with another mode of explaining them, or with no at- 
 
 tempt to explain them, yet the principles of Mr. Gibbon 
 
 would not permit him to suggest the explanation that» 
 it came from God, and a bare statement of the facts as 
 
 they occurred, with no explanation, would have made 
 
 an impression on mankind which those principles would 
 
 lead him to counteract if he could. The diffusion of 
 
 Christianity seemed to attest its divine origin. It was 
 
 an argument much relied on by Christians. On the 
 
 mass of men the manner of its propagation has always 
 
 made a deep impression in favor of its divine origin. 
 
 That the religion is from God seems to be the most nat- 
 ural, philosophical, and obvious explanation of the facts 
 
 in the case. If, therefore, it could be shown that the 
 
 propagation of that religion could be accounted for on 
 
 the supposition that it is not of God, or by mere natural 
 
 causes constantly in operation among men, much might 
 
 be done to loosen its hold on the world. 
 
 Mr. Gibbon has done his work well. No man could 
 bring to the task greater learning, more patient indus- 
 try, more impartial historical honesty, or more attract- 
 ive eloquence in thought or in style. No man surpassed 
 him in the knowledge of the vast lore treasured in an- 
 cient libraries, sacred and secular, that could be made 
 to bear on the subject; no man has ever equaled him 
 in understanding the power of a sneer. The argument, 
 as he pursued it, is complete. No one will add to it; 
 no one will improve it. 
 
 The points on which Mr. Gibbon relies in the expla- 
 nation of the “ Progress of the Christian Religion” are— 
 five in number: “ The inflexible, and, if we may use the 
 expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, 
 it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from 
 the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of invit- 
 
142 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ing, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law 
 of Moses.” “The doctrine of a future life, improved by 
 *every additional circumstance which could give weight 
 and efficacy to that important truth.” “The miracu- 
 lous powers ascribed to the primitive Church.” “The 
 pure and austere morals of Christians.” “'The union 
 and discipline of the Christian, republic, which gradu- 
 ally formed an independent and increasing state in the 
 heart of the Roman empire.” . 
 
 This is all. But I need not say that the force of 
 these considerations is not seen by the mere announce- 
 ment of their ¢étles. It could only be seen in view of 
 the very elaborate and ingenious argument with which 
 these principles are illustrated. 
 
 Of course I could not, in the task assigned me, go 
 into an examination of this argument, and you would 
 not thank me for undertaking it. The world under- 
 stands it, as the world understands the argument of 
 Mr. Hume against miracles, that, however it is to be 
 met or explained, it is not an argument to be greatly 
 relied on by infidelity. The progress of Christianity in 
 the world has not been perceptibly impeded by either ; 
 and the number of those influenced by either argument 
 is small, mostly among those in early life, and to a great 
 extent, if not entirely, those who were skeptics before. 
 Ifa personal allusion may be allowed, I may be permit- 
 ted to say that this was precisely the effect nearly fifty 
 years ago on my own mind. 
 
 Some very general remarks on the reasons thus as- 
 signed for the propagation of Christianity may, how- 
 ever, not be unprofitable or improper. 
 
 (a) It is now to be admitted—it would be conceded 
 universally—that these are a// the causes that can be 
 assigned for the propagation of Christianity on the sup- 
 
 7 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 143 
 
 position that the religion is on the same level with 
 Mohammedism, or is false. No one has attempted to 
 add to this argument; no one would be likely to at- 
 tempt it. Mr. Gibbon exhausted the subject. It was 
 to be presumed that he would state all the arguments 
 which would occur to him, and it is certain that no ar- 
 guments likely to bear on the subject would escape him. 
 Infidelity can do no more in ¢his argument, and the ar- 
 gument is complete. 9 
 ‘© Si Pergama dextra 
 Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.” 
 En. ii., 291, 292. 
 
 There are no more arguments to be added to these. 
 Historical research will add no more. Germag ration- 
 alism will add no more, and the warfare is transferred 
 to other fields. 
 
 (2) It can not be denied that Mr. Gibbon has, in these 
 statements, rendered an involuntary tribute of great 
 value to Christianity, and has conceded much that may 
 be referred to as an actual, though an indirect proof of 
 its divine origin. It was much that the necessities of 
 the case, and the claims of honest and impartial history, 
 should extort from such a man, and in such connec- 
 tions, the concessions made in regard to the system; it 
 is much that Christianity had laid the foundation for . 
 such an argument—an argument which Mr. Gibbon 
 could not have urged in explanation of the continued 
 prevalence of the Greek and Roman mythology in the 
 world, or in explanation of the propagation of the Mo- 
 hammedan system. It was much that he could refer, 
 and was constrained to refer, to “the zeal of the early 
 Christians ;” to “the doctrine of a future life, improved 
 by every additional circumstance which could give 
 weight and efficacy to that important truth ;” to “the 
 
144 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 pure and austere morals of Christians ;” and this, with 
 what was implied in the very nature of the argument, 
 and what is, in fact, conceded, that these things were 
 not found in the ancient systems of religion; that pa- 
 ganism— human wisdom and philosophy—had never 
 originated these things so as to give permanency to 
 the ancient systems of religion, or to secure their prop- 
 agation in the world. “The general system of their 
 mythology,” says he (vol. i., p. 260), ““ was unsupported 
 by any solid proofs, and the wisest among the Pagans 
 had already disclaimed its usurped authority. The doc- 
 trine of a future state was scarcely considered, among 
 the devout polytheists of Greece and Rome, as a funda- 
 mental article of faith.” “The first book of the Tusculan 
 Questions,” says he, “and the Treatise De Senectute, and 
 the Somnium Scipionis, contain, in the most beautiful 
 language, every thing that Grecian philosophy or Roman 
 good sense could possibly suggest on this dark subject ;” 
 and, as the result, he adds, “ The writings of Cicero rep- 
 resent in the most lively colors the ignorance, the er- 
 rors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers 
 with regard to the immortality of the soul” (vol. 1, p. 
 259). 
 
 The impression, in fact, made on the mind of Cicero 
 himself by the ablest argument that philosophy has 
 ever furnished for the immortality of the soul—that in 
 the Gorgias—is thus expressed in his own language, in 
 a passage which I shall have occasion to quote again: 
 “T know not how it is that when I read I assent; but 
 when I lay down the book, and begin, by myself, to 
 think of the immortality of souls, all my assent glides 
 away.”* 
 
 * Marcus. Num eloquentié Platonem superare possumus? Evolve 
 diligenter ejus eum librum, qui est de animo: amplius quod desideres, 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 145 
 
 It is natural and proper now to ask whence had the 
 Author of Christianity these views which commended 
 his religion to the world, securing its propagation, and 
 displacing all the results of human wisdom? Whence 
 sprang these “ pure and austere morals,” so unlike what 
 prevailed under the best forms of the Pagan religion, 
 so superior to any of the systems of philosophers? Let 
 it be supposed that Christianity is from God, and all 
 this is plain. What will make it plain on any other 
 supposition ? 
 
 (c) It is to be admitted by us that Mr. Gibbon is right 
 in the statement of the historical fact that these things 
 did contribute materially to the spread of Christianity, 
 for in.embracing it men gave their assent to the fact that 
 these things were so; they embraced it, among other 
 reasons, because they believed that these things were so. 
 They saw in these truths and results such a religion as 
 man needs; they saw what was not to be found in any 
 other system; they saw, or thought they saw zm these 
 things proof that a religion so pure, a religion that 
 prompted to such zeal for the good of man, a religion 
 which revealed the doctrine of immortality, must be 
 from God. Were they far from truth and nature in 
 such a supposition ? 
 
 (d) In considering the question whether these causes 
 alone would explain the facts of the propagation of 
 Christianity, let it now be supposed that the system 
 - was false; that it was based on imposture and delu- 
 sion; that Jesus never existed, or that he was an en- 
 thusiast, or that he was an impostor, or that his apos- 
 
 nihil erit. Auditor. Feci, mehercule, et quidem sepius: sed nes- 
 cio quo modo, dum lego, assentior ; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse 
 de immortalite animorum ccepi cogitare, assentio omnis illa elabitur. 
 —Tuse. Quest., lib. i., ¢. ii. 
 
 G 
 
146 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tles contrived the system with an intention to impose 
 on the world; that no miracles were wrought; that 
 Christ was not raised from the dead; that all this oc- 
 curred in the most intellectual age of past time, when 
 the light of philosophy had just culminated in Greece 
 and in Rome, and before the long night settled down 
 on Europe in the Dark Ages; when of all ages it would 
 have been most easy to detect an imposture—and the 
 problem then would be, how could such a religion, un- 
 der such apostles, and in such an age, accomplish these 
 things? How could it overthrow the ancient systems 
 of mythology; set aside the ancient laws ; change long- 
 established customs; render meaningless and void the 
 ancient sacrifices; disrobe an established priesthood ; 
 throw down ancient altars; overcome the corrupt and 
 evil passions of men; go into the scenes of domestic 
 life, and transform all around the fireside: how could 
 it remove Penates and Lares, and set up a Christian 
 altar in their place; lead men to abandon sins long in- 
 dulged, and to call things sinful which before were re- 
 garded as innocent; transform pollution to godly liy- 
 ing, and lift up the degraded to a life of pure devotion 
 and self-sacrifice, and of such men make martyrs? Yes, 
 make martyrs, for this it did by tens of thousands—the 
 young, the aged; the rich, the poor; the refined, the 
 uncultivated; the master, the slave; the man who had 
 been a philosopher, and the tender and delicate female 
 reared in luxury, and accustomed to the gayety and 
 the splendors of the court. 
 
 This is the problem; and the reasons assigned will 
 not, do not explain this. The mind is conscious of a 
 sad vacancy when these facts are before it, and these 
 reasons are assigned for those facts. It wants more; it 
 must have more. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 147 
 
 But add now the idea that all this was true—that 
 things were as they are stated in the New Testament— 
 and we have a cause that is commensurate with the ef- 
 fect, that settles all doubts, that makes all things plain. 
 
 And shall we now compare this system and these 
 facts with that other system which infidelity would 
 make parallel with this, and whose propagation the un- 
 believers would explain on the same principles—the 
 system of Mohammed ? 
 
 Well was it, though perhaps he was unconscious of 
 the reason why it was so, that Mr. Gibbon did not at- 
 tempt elaborately, as in the case of Christianity, to ex- 
 plain the causes of the rapid diffusion of that system. 
 Those causes are patent on the face of the system and 
 on the face of history. Yet Mr. Gibbon has, as in the 
 case of Christianity, narrated with great exactness and 
 fidelity the origin, the slow growth at first, the subse- 
 quent triumphs, and the influence of that system, as no 
 other man has done or could do. But he has not ven- 
 tured to suggest that its propagation might demon- 
 strate that it was of divine origin, for that might have 
 suggested a stronger argument for the propagation of 
 the other system; he has not thought it necessary, as 
 in the case of Christianity, to attempt an explanation 
 of the causes of its diffusion, for that explanation, easy, 
 natural, and satisfactory as it must have been, might 
 have appeared too much in contrast with the explana- 
 tion of the causes of the spread of Christianity, and, in 
 thus accounting for the one, might have suggested to 
 men that there was some sophistry in the explanation 
 of the other. 
 
 But can the spread of Mohammedism be explained 
 except on the supposition that it is from God? Has 
 any historian ever found any difficulty on that subject, 
 
148 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 or even felt himself embarrassed in regard to such an 
 explanation ? Is it more difficult than the explanation 
 of the conquests of Caesar or Alexander? If you add 
 to the idea of conquest—of the triumphs of arms which 
 you have in the conquests of Cesar and Alexander— 
 the idea that Mohammedism is a religion, and, there- 
 fore, meets one of the wants of mankind; that it af- 
 firms the doctrine that there is one God, and, therefore, — 
 in this respect, meets the highest wants of men; that 
 it makes provision for the indulgence of some of the 
 most powerful passions that rule in the human soul; 
 that it makes prominent as an attraction the prom- 
 ise of sensual delights alike in this world and the 
 world to come; that it imposes few restraints on the 
 passions, and those only that are most easily evaded; 
 that it falls in, in the main, with the whole course and 
 tendency of human nature, and blends these indul- 
 gences with religion, and makes them part of the re-. 
 ligion itself—if these things are before the mind, is 
 it difficult to explain the spread and the permanen- 
 cy of the system? How different from a system~ of 
 poverty, and humility, and self-denial; a system with 
 nothing of military glory; a system originated not by 
 one who was a splendid conqueror, but by one who 
 was poor and despised, and was crucified between mal- 
 efactors; a system going forth not under the blazonry 
 of banners of conquest, but as if one should make the 
 image of the gallows an emblem of his religion —for 
 the cross was then more ignominious than the gal- 
 lows is now; a system which required a renovated 
 heart, and the renunciation of the passions, and a pure 
 life! How different these two as making an appeal to 
 mankind! In the language of another, “The enthusi- 
 asm by which Mohammedism conquered the world was 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 149 
 
 mainly a military enthusiasm. Men were drawn to it 
 at once, and without conditions, by the splendor of the 
 achievements of its disciples, and it declared an abso- 
 lute war against all the religions it encountered. Its 
 history, therefore, exhibits nothing of the process of 
 gradual absorption, persuasion, compromise, and assim- 
 ilation that was exhibited in the dealings of Christian- 
 ity with barbarians.” And again: “One of the great 
 characteristics of the Koran is the extreme care and 
 skill with which it labors to assist men in realizing 
 the unseen. Descriptions the most minutely detailed, 
 and, at the same time, the most vivid, are mingled with 
 powerful appeals to those sensual passions by which 
 the imagination in all countries, but especially those in 
 which Mohammedism has taken root, is most forcibly 
 influenced.”* 
 
 When we remember these things, and when we re- 
 member, “as modern criticism has shown from the state 
 of the Arab mind and character in the period antece- 
 dent to the coming of Mohammed, that the race was 
 fully prepared for its mission as soon as some principle 
 should unite in one nationality the struggling and di- 
 vided tribes of the Peninsula,” it is not difficult to ex- 
 plain “the rapid expansion of the power of that re- 
 ligion, the brilliant and fugitive bloom of civilization 
 which embellished the dominion of the Arabs,” without 
 the supposition that it was from God.t 
 
 * Tecky, Hist. of Rationalism, i., 235. 
 
 + Edinburg Review, vol. exxiv., 1. The literature on this subject, 
 in order to a full understanding of the causes of the rise and decline 
 of this extraordinary power, may be found in the following works: 
 Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chs. 1., li., vol. iii., p. 
 360-460. Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre, von 
 Gustav Weil, Stuttgardt, 1844. Life of Mahomet, and History of Is- 
 lam to the Era of the Hegira, by William Muir, 4 vols., London, 1861. 
 
150 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 The Mohammedan religion was in the line of human 
 nature; was in accordance with a previous state of the 
 public mind; was under the guidance of an eminent 
 military chieftain and his not less illustrious successor ; 
 was connected with the founding of a mighty empire 
 —it appealed to the most powerful passions of men, and 
 yet, at the same time, gave to men what they pant for— 
 a god, a religion, a hope of immortality—and immortal- 
 ity, in its case, which was of all things most gratifying, 
 a prolongation forever of the pleasures of sense. How 
 different from the Christian scheme ! | 
 
 Mohammedism rose, and spread, and flourished as 
 a religion constructed with eminent ability, and sus- 
 tained by military power, and the love of national 
 glory; it is decaying and falling as a false religion 
 must do, not keeping up with the progress and wants 
 of the world; Christianity, as we shall see hereafter, 
 becomes more extended and wide-spread in its power 
 and influences as the world advances in civilization, 
 science, and the arts, and is the only system of religion 
 that has any promise, in itself, of spreading over the 
 nations, and of enduring to the end of human affairs. 
 
 Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed’s, von Ado/f Sprenger, 3 
 vols., Berlin, 1855-1865. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 151 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 MIRACLES: THE EVIDENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CEN- 
 TURY THAT THEY WERE PERFORMED. IN THE FIRST. 
 
 I propose, in this Lecture, to consider the evidence 
 in favor of the divine origin of Christianity as derived 
 from miracles. The particular point which I shall have 
 in view is the evidence as it exists in the nineteenth 
 century that miracles were performed in the first, or as 
 the evidence appeals to the men of this generation, 
 The remarks will have reference to the argument in the 
 present age of the world, and in view of the objections 
 which may be urged by those who deny the divine 
 origin of Christianity as derived from the present state 
 of science, and from the great changes which have oc- 
 curred in the minds of men on the stability of the laws 
 of nature now after the lapse of eighteen hundred years 
 since Christianity was introduced, and on the whole 
 subject of supernatural interferences and agencies. It 
 is evident that the state of the argument must be some- 
 what different from what it was when Christianity was 
 first proclaimed, and that it would have been compara- 
 tively easy to convince men of the reality of such su- 
 pernatural interferences as those on which Christianity 
 is based at a time when the belief in such interferences 
 was almost universal. There has been a growing con- 
 fidence, as science has advanced, in the fixedness of the 
 laws of nature, and it is conceivable that the confidence 
 in the fixedness and stability of those laws might be- 
 come so strong as to lead men to adopt it as a maxim 
 
152 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 that all testimony in favor of miracles is to be at once 
 rejected. With many persons that point is already 
 reached. ‘“ We summarily,” says Strauss (Intr. to the 
 Life of Jesus), “reject all miracles, prophecies, narratives 
 of angels and demons, and the like, as simply impossible 
 and irreconcilable with the known and universal laws 
 which govern the course of events.” So Renan, and so 
 the Westminster Review, in passages which I have had, 
 or shall have occasion to refer to, adopt this as a maxim. 
 The question whether this is so is, perhaps, the great 
 question which is before mankind in this age; it is cer- 
 tainly a question which the friends of religion in this 
 age are to meet, and in reference to which the enemies of 
 religion are pressing very hard on the faith of the Church. 
 
 The essential idea of a miracle is that of an event 
 where the only antecedent is the divine will and the 
 divine power. 'Theologically considered, it is where 
 such an event occurs as performed in attestation of the 
 divine mission of him who performs it, and as showing 
 that he is authorized to proclaim the law, or to disclose 
 the will of God, as the credentials of an embassador 
 accredit him to a foreign court, and authorize him to 
 declare the will of the government which has sent him. 
 
 It is not difficult, therefore, to distinguish the idea 
 of a miracle from that of an ordinary event, and it is 
 not necessary, in order to obtain that idea, to inquire 
 whether it is a suspension of the laws of nature, as 
 theologians have commonly affirmed it to be, or a vio- 
 lation of the laws of nature, as Mr. Hume was pleased 
 to regard it, or as the introduction of a higher law of 
 nature adjusted to the occasion, as Dr. Thomas Brown 
 seems to have regarded it. If there are laws of nature 
 already in operation in relation to that on which the 
 miracle is performed, of course those laws would be 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 153 
 
 “suspended” for the time; whether in any case there 
 would be a “violation” of those laws, or whether all 
 that there is in the case is the introduction of higher 
 laws, are points which, perhaps, are above us, and which 
 would not, at any rate, help us in understanding the 
 real nature of a miracle. 
 
 The idea is, that the only antecedent in the case is 
 the divine wid/—the divine power. That is all that en- 
 ters into the result. That covers and explains all. In 
 the creation of the world, the only antecedent was the 
 divine will—the divine power. It was not by any es- 
 tablished laws; it was not by the use of subordinate 
 agencies ; it was not a development from things al- 
 ready existing. In the formation of new races upon 
 the earth in the old geological periods preparatory to the 
 introduction of man, and in the creation of man himself, 
 the only antecedent in each case was the divine will— 
 the divine power. One race was not developed from 
 another, nor were the elements of the one taken as ma- 
 terials from which to form the other. One race was 
 entirely swept away from the earth, to be succeeded 
 by another, brought into existence in a similar manner, 
 and by the same power. In raising the dead, the only 
 antecedent in the case is the divine will—the divine 
 power. There is nothing in the condition of the dead 
 tending to that; there are no laws of nature operating 
 in the grave in that line or direction; there is nothing 
 in the condition of the dead—no germ—no hidden life * 
 —that can be developed into the new form of being. 
 All the laws of “nature” in the case tend to a different 
 result—to decomposition and permanent death; and if 
 those laws continued to operate with no counteracting 
 will or power, the dead would remain in their graves 
 forever. 
 
 Gi. 2 
 
154 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 This is the essential idea in a miracle. The particu- 
 lar idea, as connected with the evidences of revealed 
 religion, is that this power is put forth in attestation 
 of one who claims to be a messenger from heaven, or in 
 the establishment of some doctrine or truth to be be- 
 lieved by men. Whatever may be the difference of 
 opinion as to the fact of such a divine interposition, 
 there can be none on the question whether such a pow- 
 er, if exerted, would be a sufficient confirmation of a 
 claim to a divine mission, or of the truth of a doctrine ~ 
 proposed to the faith of mankind. Men are so made 
 that they could not believe otherwise, nor can they rea- 
 son themselves into a contrary belief. Here, at least, 
 the limits of skepticism are fixed and settled. God 
 would not give this power to an impostor, nor would he 
 put forth this power in defense of a falsehood. Men may 
 believe that there is no God, but they can not believe 
 that, if there is a God, he would raise the dead to confirm 
 a lie or to deceive mankind. Whatever may be their 
 views of God—Fetish, Polytheistic, Monotheistic, Deist- 
 ic, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, Trinitarian, Uni- 
 tarian, they will agree in this. They are so made, and 
 they can not think otherwise. Whoever made man, or 
 however, or whenever he was formed, this idea was in- 
 corporated into his very nature. His Maker—known 
 or unknown to us—meant that man should believe that 
 if he interposed by his direct will and power, it would 
 bein favor of truth, not of falsehood ; in favor of one 
 sent from heaven, and not in favor of an impostor. So 
 men have believed, and so they will believe to the end 
 of time. 
 
 As to the evidence of the truth of miracles, the next 
 question is not so much whether those in reference to 
 which the claim would be made are established by suF- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 155 
 
 FICIENT testimony, as whether they can be established 
 by ANY TESTIMONY WHATEVER. In the language of Mr. 
 Mansel (Aids to Faith, p. 16), “If it once be granted 
 that testimony is admissible in the case, it is scarcely 
 possible to conceive a stronger testimony than that 
 which the Christian miracles can claim.” Accordingly, 
 Strauss and Renan asswme that a miracle is simply im- 
 possible, and that al reference to miracles is to be en- 
 tirely laid out of the question. Mr. Hume also places 
 the matter expressly on that ground. He says: “A 
 miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a 
 firm and unalterable experience has established these 
 laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature 
 of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience 
 can possibly be imagined.”—Kssays, vol. i, p. 108, ed. 
 Phila., 1817. This, too, is the tendency of science, so 
 far as science bears on the subject at all; for just in 
 proportion as men approximate the position that the 
 laws of nature are universal, fixed, and unchangeable, 
 they approximate the position that no human testimony 
 whatever could establish the truth of a miracle. “No 
 testimony,” we are told, on high scientific authority, 
 “can reach to the supernatural; testimony can apply 
 only to apparent, sensible facts; testimony can only 
 prove an extraordinary and perhaps inexplicable phe- 
 ‘nomenon ; that it is due to supernatural causes is en- 
 tirely dependent on the previous belief and assumption 
 of the parties.”* And this 7s the question. In the lan- 
 guage of Mr. Mansel, “The question is not the rarity 
 of miracles—no one asserts them to be common; it is 
 not their general improbability—no one asserts them 
 to be generally probable; it is not that they need: an 
 extraordinary testimony as compared with other events 
 * Essays and Reviews, p. 107. 
 
156 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 —such a testimony we assert they have. It is neither 
 more nor less than their impossibility ; an impossibil- 
 ity to be established on scientific grounds, such as 
 
 no reasonable man would reject in any other case— 
 grounds such as those on which we believe that the 
 earth goes round the sun, or that chemical elements 
 combine in definite proportions. In this point of view 
 the argument is altogether of a general character, and 
 is unaffected by any peculiarities of probability or tes- 
 timony which may distinguish one miraculous narra- 
 tive from another. If the progress of physical or met- 
 aphysical science has shown beyond the possibility of 
 reasonable doubt that miracles are impossible ; if, as 
 seems to be the tendency of a recent argument, the as- 
 sertion of a miracle is now known to be as absurd as 
 the assertion that two and two make five,* it is idle to 
 attempt a comparison between greater or less degrees 
 of probability or testimony.” 
 
 In this connection, as showing what is the state of 
 one class of minds on this subject, and perhaps as rep- 
 resenting in fact more than would be willing to avow 
 it, 1 may copy a remark and an illustration of Renan 
 which I have before quoted (Life of Jesus, p. 43, 44, 
 45); “ None of the miracles,” says he, “with which an- 
 cient histories are filled, occurred under scientific condi- 
 tions. Observation, never once contradicted, teaches us 
 that miracles occur only in periods and countries in 
 which they are believed in, and before persons disposed 
 to believe them. No miracle was ever performed be- 
 fore an assembly of men capable of establishing the 
 - miraculous character of an act. Neither men of the 
 people nor men of the world are competent for that. 
 Great precautions and a long habit of scientific research 
 are requisite. 
 
 * Essays and Reviews, p. 141. + Aids to Faith, p.19. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 157 
 
 “We do not say,” he adds, in a passage which I have 
 quoted before, “miracle is impossible; we say hitherto 
 there has been none proved. Let a thaumaturgist pre- 
 sent himself to-morrow with testimony sufficiently im- 
 portant to merit our attention; let him announce that 
 he is able, I will suppose, to raise the dead, what would 
 be done? A commission composed of physiologists, 
 physicians, chemists, persons experienced in historical 
 criticism, would be appointed. This commission would 
 choose the corpse, make certain that death was real, 
 designate the hall in which the experiment should be 
 made, and regulate the whole system of precautions 
 necessary to leave no room for doubt. If, under such 
 conditions, the resurrection should be performed, a prob- 
 ability almost equal to certainty would be attained. 
 However, as an experiment ought always to be capable 
 of being repeated, as one ought to be capable of doing 
 again what one has done once, and as in the matter of 
 miracles there can be no question of easy or difficult, 
 the thaumaturgist would be invited to reproduce his 
 marvelous act under other circumstances, upon other 
 bodies, in another medium. If the miracle succeeds 
 each time, two things would be proven: first, that su- 
 pernatural acts do come to pass in the world; second, 
 the power to perform them belongs or is delegated to 
 certain persons. But who does not see that no miracle 
 was ever performed under such conditions; that always 
 hitherto the thaumaturgist has chosen the subject of 
 the experiment, chosen the means, chosen the public; 
 that, moreover, it is, in most cases, the people them- 
 selves who, from the undeniable need which they feel of 
 seeing in great events and in great men something di- 
 vine, create the marvelous legends afterward.” 
 
 Such are some of the feelings and views which the 
 
158 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 defenders of miracles are to meet in the nineteenth 
 century. 
 
 It is important, then, to remark here that Christian- 
 ity is founded on a belief of the possibility and the real- 
 ity of miracles, and on the belief that it is possible to 
 establish the fact that they have occurred by testimony, 
 as firmly as testimony can establish any other fact— 
 that is, so as to make this the basis of faith and of ac- 
 tion in our highest interests. No one who receives any 
 thing on the ground of testimony can doubt that Christ 
 claimed the power of working true miracles, as a proof 
 that he came from God. “That ye may know that the 
 Son of Man hath power uponsearth to forgive sins, I say 
 unto thee, Arise, and take up thy couch, and go into 
 thine house.”—Luke, v., 24. “If I with the finger of 
 God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is 
 come upon you.”—Luke, xi, 20. 
 
 No one can doubt, also, that as Jesus claimed the 
 power of working miracles, and appealed to them as 
 proof of his divine mission, so his disciples believed 
 that he actually did work miracles, and went forth to 
 propagate his religion on that ground. 
 
 Still farther, no one can doubt, as I showed in the 
 last Lecture, that Christianity was propagated on that 
 ground, and that the belief that it was sustained by 
 miraculous or supernatural agency was one ofthe main 
 reasons why it was embraced at all, and why it made 
 so rapid progress in the world. 
 
 In like manner, no one can doubt that the apostles 
 claimed the same power, and that it was, also, on the 
 belief that they had the power miraculously of speak- 
 ing foreign languages, of healing the sick, and of rais- 
 ing the dead, that they spread the religion abroad 
 among the nations. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 159 
 
 No man can explain the things referred to in the New 
 Testament, and claimed to be miracles, on any princi- 
 ples of optical illusion, of jugglery, of deception, of 
 sleight of hand, of superior knowledge of physical laws, 
 of an acquaintance with the secret powers of nature. 
 Many things that were once regarded as miracles may 
 be thus explained; many things once reckoned among 
 the works of “magic,” or that were regarded as super- 
 natural, have been explained on principles of science, 
 by Sir David Brewster, in his work on “ Magic ;” many 
 of the tricks of jugglers, that may be above our power 
 to explain them, are yet of easy explanation; many 
 things may be produced in the laboratory of the chem- 
 ist which may seem to be miraculous to the unlearned, 
 but which are plain to the chemist himself; and many 
 of the things relied on by impostors as proofs that they 
 were from God, can be now easily explained. But the 
 miracles of the New Testament can not thus be explain- 
 ed. Renan has indeed attempted to explain the heal- 
 ing of Peter’s wife’s mother, and the resurrection of 
 Lazarus, and the alleged resurrection of Jesus, but the 
 world will not accept such explanations. If the facts 
 occurred, they are above the operations of any laws of 
 nature. If the lame were made to walk; if the lepers 
 were cleansed ; if the eyes of the blind were opened; if 
 diseases departed by a word; if the dead were restored 
 to life, these things are above any natural laws, and the 
 world will hold the whole to be deceit and imposture, 
 or will believe that they were real miracles, that is, 
 events where the only antecedent was the will and the 
 power of God. 
 
 Whether Christianity could or could not have been 
 originally propagated, as it is now to be kept up in the 
 world, without miraculous agency, might be a fair ques- 
 
160 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tion; but it is certain that the experiment was 7o¢ thus 
 made, and that it was not thus propagated. The infidel 
 must concede, at least, that it was, in fact, propagated 
 on the belief that Christ really performed miracles, and 
 that he himself was actually raised from the dead. 
 
 At this stage of the argument, therefore, the follow- 
 ing points of statement and inquiry occur: 
 
 (1.) Is a miracle possible, that is, in the form in which 
 the question must come before us, not, whether, suppos- 
 ing that there is a God—a being of almighty power who 
 has framed and established the laws of nature—/e could 
 set aside his laws, and himself work without them, for 
 no rational man could doubt that; but whether there 
 is by fate, or physical necessity, or otherwise, any such 
 ascertained fixedness and stability of the laws of nature 
 that it can not be believed that they would ever be set 
 aside by the introduction of a higher power working 
 ~ without reference to them ? 
 
 (2.) Is it possible to establish the fact ¢7fa miracle 
 has been wrought? Can there be evidence which will 
 properly set aside the presumption of the absolute uni- 
 formity of the laws of nature, as derived from experi- 
 ence, or the study of those laws, or from any other 
 cause, that this has actually been done? Is it not much 
 more probable that men have been deceived, or have 
 been imposed upon, than that those laws have been set 
 aside for any purpose? Has not the world been full of 
 instances where testimony was false; have there been 
 any corresponding instances or facts in the way in 
 which the. affairs of the world are actually managed, 
 that might be. considered as parallel to this, or that 
 might be equally regarded as a departure from fixed 
 and regular laws? 
 
 (3.) Is the evidence adduced, even if a miracle has 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 161 
 
 been wrought, such as the case would require ; such as 
 the world might demand; such as would properly sat- 
 isfy a man accustomed to reason on scientific principles; 
 such as a geologist or astronomer would admit in re- 
 gard to the condition of the earth in former ages, or the 
 recorded phenomena of the heavenly bodies? Is the 
 evidence such that it ought to convince us? Does the 
 strength of the testimony at all correspond with the 
 unusual and the improbable nature of the fact? May 
 it not be demanded that the testimony shall be such as 
 would correspond with the unusual and improbable na- 
 ture of the fact; that, as there is the strongest presump- 
 tion against the miracle, so the testimony ought to be 
 not merely that which would establish an ordinary 
 event, but such as would overcome this presumption 
 against it ? 
 
 (4.) A more material and important question still is, 
 Whether there is any stronger evidence in favor of mira- 
 cles than there is in favor of witchcraft, of sorcery, of 
 the reappearance of the dead, of ghosts, of apparitions ? 
 Is not the evidence in favor of these as strong as any 
 that can be adduced in favor of miracles? Have not 
 these things been matters of universal belief? In what 
 respects is the evidence in favor of the miracles of the 
 Bible stronger than that which can be adduced in favor 
 of witchcraft and sorcery? Does it differ in nature and 
 in degree; and if it differs, is it not in favor of witch- 
 craft and sorcery ? Has not the evidence in favor of 
 the latter been derived from as competent and credible 
 witnesses? Has it not been brought to us from those 
 who saw the facts alleged? Has it not been subjected 
 to a close scrutiny in courts of justice—to cross-exam- 
 inations—to tortures? Has it not convinced those of 
 highest legal attainments ; those accustomed to sift tes- 
 
162 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 timony ; those who understood the true principles of 
 evidence? Has not the evidence in favor of witchcraft 
 and sorcery had, what the evidence in favor of miracles 
 has not had, the advantage of strict judicial investiga- 
 tion, and been subjected to trial, where evidence should 
 be, before courts of law? Have not the most eminent 
 judges in the most civilized and enlightened courts of 
 Europe and America admitted the force of such evi- 
 dence, and on the ground of it committed great num- 
 bers of innocent persons to the gallows or to the stake ? 
 
 I confess that of all the questions ever asked on the 
 subject of miracles, this is the most perplexing and the 
 most difficult to answer. It is rather to be wondered 
 at that it has not been pressed with more zeal by those 
 who deny the reality of miracles, and that they have 
 placed their objections so extensively on other grounds. 
 From the fact that it is so seldom referred to by skep- 
 tics, it is manifest that it does not strike them as it 
 strikes me, and that they, from some cause, are not dis- 
 posed to use it as I would, if I had no faith in miracles ; 
 and perhaps it may savor more of apparent candor than 
 of wise prudence for a believer in the reality of mira- 
 cles even to make the suggestion. 
 
 The argument might be made very strong, and if 
 there were time to present it here, it might be done in 
 such a manner that it might seem, at least, to be impos- 
 sible to meet and refute it. 
 
 An extract or two from Lecky, in his History of Ra- 
 tionalism in Europe, will show the nature of the diffi- 
 culty and the force of the objection, though the remarks 
 made by him are in no way designed to support the 
 cause of infidelity: “For more than fifteen hundred 
 years it was universally believed that the Bible estab- 
 lished, in the clearest manner, the reality of the crime 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 163 
 
 [of witchcraft], and that an amount of evidence, so va- 
 ried and so ample as to preclude the very possibility of 
 doubt, attested its continuance and its prevalence. The 
 clergy denounced it with all the emphasis of authority. 
 The legislators of almost every land enacted laws for 
 its punishment. Acute judges, whose lives were spent 
 in sifting evidence, investigated the question on count- 
 less occasions, and condemned the accused. Tens of 
 thousands of victims perished by the most agonizing 
 and protracted torments without exciting the faintest 
 compassion. Nations that were completely separated 
 by position, by interests, and by character, on this one 
 question were united. In almost every province of 
 Germany, but especially in those where clerical influ- 
 ence predominated, the persecution raged with fearful 
 intensity. Seven thousand victims are said to have 
 been burned at Treves, six hundred by the single bishop 
 of Bamberg, and eight hundred in a single year in 
 the bishopric of Wurtzburg. In France, decrees were 
 passed on the subject by the Parliaments of Paris, Tou- 
 louse, Bordeaux, Rheims, Rouen, Dijon, and Rennes, and 
 they were all followed by a harvest of blood. At Tou- 
 louse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred persons 
 perished for sorcery at a single execution, and fifty at 
 Douay in a single year. Remy, a judge of Nancy, 
 boasted that he had put to death eight hundred witches 
 in sixteen years. The executions that took place at 
 Paris in a few months were, in the emphatic words of 
 an old writer, ‘almost infinite.’ The fugitives who es- 
 caped to Spain were there seized and burned by the In- 
 quisition. In Italy a thousand persons were executed 
 in a single year in the province of Como; in the other 
 parts of the country the severity of the inquisitors ‘at 
 last created an absolute rebellion. In Geneva five hund- 
 
164 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 red alleged witches were executed in three months; 
 forty-eight were burned at Constance or Ravensburg, 
 and eighty in the little town of Valery, inSavoy. The 
 Church of Rome proclaimed in every way that was in 
 her power the reality and the continued existence of 
 the crime.” 
 
 The writer from whom I have made this extract 
 adds: “It is, I think, difficult to examine the subject 
 with impartiality, without coming to the conclusion 
 that the historical evidence establishing the reality of 
 witchcraft is so vast and so varied that it is impossible 
 to disbelieve it without what on other subjects we 
 should deem the most extraordinary rashness. The de- 
 fenders of the belief, who were often men of great and 
 distinguished talent, maintained that there was no fact — 
 in all history more fully attested, and that to reject it 
 would be to strike at the root of all historical evidence 
 of the miraculous. The subject was examined in tens 
 of thousands of cases, in almost every country of Eu- 
 rope, by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers 
 and ecclesiastics of the age, on the scene at the time 
 when the alleged facts had taken place, and with the 
 assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses. The judges 
 had no motive whatever to desire the condemnation of 
 the accused ; and as conviction would be followed by a 
 fearful death, they had the strongest motives to exer- 
 cise their power with caution and deliberation. In our 
 day it may be said with confidence that it would be al- | 
 together impossible for such an amount of evidence to 
 accumulate round a conception which had no basis in 
 fact. If we considered witchcraft probable, a hund- 
 redth part of the evidence we possess would have 
 placed it beyond the region of doubt. If it were a 
 natural, but a very improbable fact, our reluctance to 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. — 165 
 
 believe it would have been completely stifled by the 
 multiplicity of the proofs.”* 
 
 As materially bearing on the point before us, it would 
 be important to inquire into the changes which have oc- 
 curred in the world in regard to faith in the miraculous 
 and the supernatural, and to ask to what this changé 
 tends, or how it bears on the subject of miracles. But 
 I have not time or ability to do it, and it: has been done 
 in a manner which leaves nothing to be desired by 
 Lecky. 
 
 Successively, by the slow progress of civilization; by 
 the advances of science; by being able by natural laws 
 to explain what were once regarded as portents and 
 wonders; by a gradual cessation of faith in things that 
 seemed to be established by incontrovertible evidence, 
 eclipses, and meteors, and famines, and earthquakes, 
 and comets, have been removed from the regions of 
 the marvelous, and, in like manner, the faith of man- 
 kind in sorcery, and witchcraft, and magic has, to a 
 great extent, passed away. If there are remains of 
 this still lingering in the minds of men, and if new and 
 strange things have been added to these in our age 
 not less absurd and irrational than the faith in witch- 
 craft and sorcery, these are not so general as materially 
 to affect the question before us. It has not yet occur- 
 red, as far as I know, to infidelity to place the subject 
 of “ table-moving” and “ spirit-rapping” on a level with 
 the miracles of the New Testament. 
 
 It is a great question now—the great question of our 
 age in regard to religion, and not less important in re- 
 gard to science—How far is this skepticism to extend ? 
 What is its proper limit? Is the principle to become 
 
 * See Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. i., pp. 28, 34, 
 36, 37, 38, 39. 
 
166 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 so universal as to include ad the facts claiming to be 
 of a supernatural nature which have actually occurred, 
 or which will occur in our world? Is it to embrace 
 the whole region of the miraculous and the supernatu- 
 ral, so as to exclude the idea of any direct agency on the 
 part of God, any phenomena—any changes—the ante- 
 cedents in which are only the divine will and the divine 
 power? So itis maintained by Rationalists; such, too, 
 is the practical belief of many men whose lives are de- 
 voted to science. 
 
 The progress of things, the influences of civilization, 
 the discoveries of science in regard to physical laws, 
 have “exorcised” the world, if the expression may be 
 allowed, in regard to sorcery, witchcraft, magic, necro- 
 mancy, portents and wonders in eclipses, storms, and 
 earthquakes ; are these to “exorcise” the world in re- 
 gard to mesmerism, spiritualism, spirit-rapping, and 
 table-moving; and are they also to “ exorcise” it 
 in regard to the belief that Joshua caused the sun to 
 “stand still upon Gibeon,” and the moon “in the valley 
 of Ajalon ;” in regard to the stilling of the tempest on 
 the Sea of Tiberias ; in regard to the healing of the lame 
 man at the pool of Bethesda; in regard to the opening 
 of the eyes of Bartimeus; in regard to the raising of 
 Lazarus from the grave; in regard to the resurrection 
 of the Redeemer himself? 
 
 So say the Rationalist and the skeptic, and here issue 
 is joined. 
 
 We approach, then, this great question in this form; 
 and my wish is to show you exactly how this matter 
 lies; what progress is made toward this result; what 
 there is to show that this result can never be reached, 
 and that, notwithstanding all this, the believer in the 
 miracles of the Bible has no cause of alarm as to any 
 such result. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 167 
 
 I shall, in the remainder of this Lecture, first make 
 some preliminary, or, rather, if you will allow the word, 
 eliminary* remarks, and then show you that this con- 
 clusion has not been reached, and that it is impossible 
 for men to reach it, leaving in fact in the nineteenth 
 century the evidence for miracles the same as that of 
 ordinary -well-authenticated facts in history on other 
 subjects. 
 
 (a) The first remark is, that the universal belief in 
 miracles and the marvelous; the ease with which such 
 things are credited by men, the most enlightened as 
 well as the unenlightened, statesmen, jurists, ecclesi- 
 astics, law-givers, sages—Socrates, Coke, Bacon, Hale, 
 among numberless others—shows that a belief in the 
 supernatural and the marvelous does not shock man- 
 kind; is not contrary to the laws of the human mind; 
 is rather in accordance with some law of our nature 
 that dooks for such interventions, and seeks and expects 
 to be gratified. It may be added, also, that this proves 
 that men would naturally expect such an intervention 
 if a revelation were made to mankind.—lIt is not safe to 
 argue against a universal law of human nature; against 
 deep convictions which have been implanted in the soul 
 of man, and which seek expression in all ages and among 
 all people. Such a method of reasoning will be found, 
 sooner or later, to be fundamentally wrong. We may 
 assume that our Maker did not constitute our being on 
 a universal lie, or incorporate into our nature faith in a 
 universal falsehood. This may be called credulity; su- 
 perstition; the fruit of ignorance; prejudice. The ma- 
 terial fact, however, is that the mind of man is so made ; 
 and that this proves that He who made it designed 
 so to endow it that it would not be shocked by the 
 
 * Eliminating, expelling; discharging ; throwing off.— Webster. 
 
168 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 marvelous and the supernatural, and that men should 
 be prepared to welcome the evidence of the truly mi- 
 raculous when it is presented to them. It is to be 
 presumed, also, that if this is the original and normal 
 state of the human mind, there would be events under 
 the divine government which would properly corre- 
 spond with this. The fact that men are made with eyes 
 adapted to vision is presumptive evidence that there ~ 
 would be light corresponding with their structure, and 
 that there would be things to be seen; the original ca- 
 pacity of mankind for knowledge supposes that there 
 would be things to be known; that law of our nature — 
 which demands society presupposes that there would 
 be other beings with whom friendships could be formed ; 
 the natural desire of men to know God supposes that 
 there is a God to be known; the universal expectation 
 of miracles supposes that there would be miracles in 
 which man could believe. ; 
 
 (6) The second remark is, that the question so much 
 agitated, and so difficult of solution, at what time mira- 
 cles ceased in the Church, and whether they were or 
 were not continued after the time of the apostles, does 
 not affect the question whether the miracles of the New 
 Testament were really performed; whether, for exam- 
 ple, Jesus turned water into wine, or raised Lazarus 
 from the grave. If those miracles which were claimed 
 to be performed in the early Church were false; if those 
 claimed to be wrought by the Holy Coat at Treves 
 were true; if those wrought by the Emperor Vespasian, 
 and at the tomb of St. Francis Xavier, on which Mr. 
 Hume dwells so complacently, were true or were false, 
 it does not prove that God did not interpose by direct 
 power in giving a new religion to the world, and in fur- 
 nishing attestations that the great messenger came from 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 169 
 
 him. If the Christian fathers worked miracles, it does 
 not prove that Paul did not; if those claimed to have 
 been wrought by the fathers were false, that does not 
 prove that those which Christ claimed to have wrought 
 were false also. If there have been false claimants to 
 the crown of England, that does not prove that the 
 claim of the present sovereign is unfounded. 
 
 (c) Athird remark is, that it is assuming more than can 
 be proved that direct divine interventions in the affairs 
 of the universe have ceased now altogether, or that there 
 are no events occurring in which the divine will and the 
 divine power are the only antecedents. Proof on that 
 point is obviously beyond the capacity of man. In the 
 argument of Dr. Clarke on the Being of a God, it was re- 
 marked that, unless man was omnipresent, he could not 
 possibly demonstrate that there was no God; for in that 
 part of space beyond him, and which he could not pene- 
 trate, it was possible that there might bea God. In like 
 manner we may say that, unless man now is omnipres- 
 ent, and unless he can bring all the events which occur, 
 seen and unseen, under the explanation of natural laws, 
 it is possible that some of those events may be perform- 
 ed by the direct agency of God. Moreover, it is im- 
 possible to prove that God has in any way so pledged 
 or committed himself to abide always by established 
 and regular laws, and never to put forth his direct pow- 
 er in creation, in the government of worlds, or in their 
 destruction, that man can assume this as an axiom or 
 established truth, in relation to the present races of 
 animals now on the earth, or in relation to any new 
 races that he may bring upon the stage. At no one 
 of the old geological periods of our world could it have 
 been shown that God had “committed” or “ pledged” 
 himself that he would not sweep off the existing races, 
 
 H 
 
170 . LECTURES ON THE 
 
 and that he would create no more; nor does the fact 
 of the uniformity of laws, so far as established yet, 
 constitute any such “committal” on the part of God 
 that he will not again interpose by his direct power in 
 the affairs of the universe. It is certain that there are 
 many things occurring which science has not as yet 
 been able to reduce to natural and regular laws, great 
 as is the progress which has been made in that direc- 
 tion; it is equally certain that but a small part of our 
 own world—land, water, air—has been explored; it is 
 certain that man knows almost nothing of the manner 
 in which things are done in distant worlds; and it is 
 possible that in that vast region of the unknown there 
 may be things occurring which are the direct and im- 
 mediate result of the will and the power of God. At 
 all events, man is not in a condition to pronounce an 
 opinion on that subject, and he violates one of the rules 
 of sound philosophy when, from so narrow a basis of 
 observed facts, he draws a sweeping and universal con- 
 clusion. 
 
 (7) A fourth remark is, that it is difficult to see why 
 the facts in a miracle, if a miracle occurs, are not as sus- 
 ceptible of proof as any other facts.. If the sun stood 
 still at the command of Joshua, the fact was in itself as 
 susceptible of proof as that the sun seemed to move; 
 if a lame man “ leaped as an hart,” there would be no 
 more difficulty, one would suppose, in proving that he 
 leaped than that any other man leaped; if one who was 
 sick rose up and carried his couch, there would be no 
 more difficulty in establishing such a fact in regard to 
 him than in regard to another man; and if one who was 
 dead was alive again, that fact, it would seem, would 
 be susceptible of easy proof. The testimony of credi- 
 ble witnesses that they had seen such a man as Lazarus 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. tT! 
 
 in ordinary life would not be called in question; how 
 would the testimony that they saw him after it was 
 known or affirmed that he was dead vary the nature of 
 the evidence? In what respects does the testimony 
 differ? What zs the testimony when one affirms that 
 he has seen a certain person? How does that differ 
 when the testimony pertains to the same person at 
 another time, even after it was known that he was 
 dead? If in the one case the fact can be established, 
 why may it not in the other? 
 
 The dlusion here, to use no harsher term, is in the 
 supposition as to what is seen in the case. The objector 
 to miracles supposes that it is necessary to see the miracle 
 itself, and that, unless this is seen, there can be no prop- 
 er testimony in the case. But no witness could possibly 
 see two and two make four, 77 the abstract. No man 
 pretends that he sees the changes which occur in the 
 growth of a plant, or in the formation of the animal from 
 the embryo, or the fowl from the egg. No man pre- 
 tends to see the processes in the changes which occur in 
 the laboratory of the chemist. In the last case, as sub- 
 stantially in all these cases, what is seen 1s the appear- 
 ance of certain combinations of the elements of matter 
 in one form, and then the appearance of the same ele- 
 ments of matter as they exist in new formations. The 
 testimony of the chemist as to the existence of the dat- 
 ter would be as credible as his testimony in regard to 
 the former, and would require no additional confirma- 
 tion. No one would call the testimony in question be- 
 _ cause he had not seen the process of the transformation, 
 or because there was a power there, lying back of the 
 new form assumed, which he could not explain or un- 
 derstand. The facts in the case would in no manner 
 be affected by this consideration, nor, in examining 
 
72 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 such a witness, would that consideration be allowed to 
 affect the credibility of the testimony. Suppose that 
 that power were the direct power and will of God—as 
 for aught he knows it may be—would that affect the 
 nature of the testimony of the chemist as to the reality 
 of the visible change? And then suppose that he were 
 called to give testimony as to the fact that a man was 
 blind, and that a man saw, how does the fact that there 
 _ may lie detween the two things the power and the will 
 of God affect the one case more than the other? There 
 are difficulties 77 such a transformation which no one 
 has been able to explain, but those difficulties in ordi- 
 nary cases would not be allowed to be a bar to the re- 
 ception of the testimony as to the preceding and the 
 subsequent facts. Lazarus before his death and Laza- 
 rus after his death was precisely the same man; and it 
 is difficult to see how the testimony in regard to hin, 
 if exactly the same, should be admitted in the one case 
 and rejected in the other. 
 
 (ce) One other remark. It is, that science, so far as it 
 has gone, has demonstrated that the alleged miracles 
 of the New Testament, if the facts occurred, can not be 
 explained by the laws of nature, or that they could not 
 have been wrought by any physical Jaws. Very many 
 things, as we have seen, once deemed supernatural and 
 miraculous, have been shown to be the production of 
 the ordinary laws of nature, and have thus been re- 
 moved from the region of the marvelous, and have 
 taken their places among things well understood as 
 being in accordance with regular laws. Eclipses, mete- 
 ors, comets, earthquakes, the lightning, the zgnus fatuus 
 —things that once alarmed mankind, have thus, to a 
 great extent, taken their places in the ordinary course 
 of events. A¢sculapius is no longer worshiped as the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 1738 
 
 god of medicine, for it is no longer supposed that there 
 is any direct and supernatural divine agency in the 
 healing art; nor are Ceres or Neptune worshiped as if 
 supernatural divine power were manifested in the rear- 
 ing of fruits, or in regulating the storm, or in the ebbing 
 and the flowing of the waters of the sea, The magician 
 has given way to the chemist working by established 
 laws. Marvels and wonders, therefore, have been great- 
 ly limited and diminished by placing these events un- 
 der the operation of the regular rules of nature. 
 Science has not advanced so far, however, as to ex- 
 plain the miracles of the New Testament on any known 
 principles, as it has in these matters, nor has it made 
 any approximation to it. Nay, just so far as it has 
 gone it has demonstrated that those miracles can not be 
 explained on any principles known, or likely to be known, 
 to science—gravitation, attraction, repulsion, electric- 
 ity, galvanism, or the healing properties of vegeta- 
 bles or minerals. The chemist does not open the eyes 
 of the blind by a touch; he does not heal the sick by 
 a word; he does not raise the dead by the blow-pipe 
 or by galvanism. In the language of Mr. Mansel, “ The 
 advance of physical science tends to strengthen rather 
 than to weaken our conviction of the supernatural char- 
 acter of the Christian miracles. In whatever propor- 
 tion our knowledge of physical causation is limited, 
 and the number of unknown natural agents compara- 
 tively large, in the same proportion is the probability 
 that some of these unknown causes, acting in some un- 
 known manner, may have given rise to the alleged mar- 
 vels. But this probability diminishes when each newly- 
 discovered agent, as its properties become known, is 
 shown to be inadequate to the production of the sup- 
 posed effects, and as the residue of unknown causes, 
 
174 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 which might produce them, becomes smaller and small- 
 er. We are told, indeed, that the ‘inevitable progress 
 of research must, within a longer or shorter period, un- 
 ravel all that seems most marvelous; but we may be 
 permitted to doubt the relevancy of the remark to the 
 present case, until it has been shown that the advance 
 of science has in some degree enabled men to perform 
 the miracles performed by Christ. When the inevitable 
 ‘progress of research shall have enabled men of modern 
 times to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still 
 tempests with a word, to raise the dead to life, to die 
 themselves, and to rise again, we may allow that the 
 same causes might possibly have been called into oper- 
 ation ten thousand years earlier, by some great man in 
 advance of his age. But, until this is done, the unray- 
 eling of the marvelous in other phenomena only serves 
 to leave these works in their solitary grandeur, as 
 wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and unap- 
 proachable by all the knowledge and all the power of 
 man. The appearance of a comet or the fall of an aero- 
 lite may be reduced by the advance of science from a 
 supposed supernatural to a natural occurrence; and this 
 reduction furnishes a reasonable presumption that other 
 phenomena of a like character will in time meet with a 
 like explanation. But the reverse is the case with re- 
 spect to those phenomena which are narrated as pro- 
 duced by personal agency. In proportion as the science 
 of to-day surpasses that of former generations, so is the 
 improbability that any man could have done in past 
 times, by natural means, works which no skill of the 
 present age is able to imitate.” 
 
 With these general remarks on the subject of mira- 
 cles, I proceed to state what is the form which the ar- 
 
 * Essays and Reviews, p. 109. + Aids to Faith, p. 21, 22. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 175 
 
 gument assumes in the nineteenth century, or, in the 
 present age of the world, with all the advances which 
 have been made in science; or what points have been 
 established as bearing on the possibility and the credi- 
 bility of the miracles of the New Testament. 
 
 I. The first remark is, that no such universality of 
 the certain and fixed laws of nature as is claimed by 
 those who deny the reality of miracles, has been ascer- 
 tained and demonstrated; nor can it be. In other 
 words, amidst the infinite number and variety of phe- 
 nomena which have occurred in our world, and in other 
 worlds, and which are now constantly occurring, it has 
 not been demonstrated, and can not be, that there are 
 none in respect to which the.only antecedent is the di- 
 rect will and power of God. To show that miracles 
 are not possible, and not credible, it is necessary to do 
 this. But this can not be done; for, if there is any thing . 
 ‘made clear by science, it is that the human powers of 
 observation and comprehension are not vast enough to 
 establish so universal a proposition. The argument of 
 Newton in regard to “ gravitation” could not reach the 
 point that there is, and has been nowhere, any matter 
 that is not moved by another force. The laws of Kep- 
 ler in regard to planetary motions are not so establish- 
 ed in regard to their universality that there may not 
 be, somewhere in the boundlessness of space, worlds 
 held in being, and moved by other forces than these. 
 
 The remark now made, so obvious, demonstrates that 
 no one can prove that the uniformity and fixedness of 
 the laws of nature is so “ universal” as to exclude the 
 possibility of miracles ; for such a demonstration must 
 take in all events, all worlds, all systems, all beings— 
 angels and God as well as men. Our “ experience,” of 
 which so much is made by Mr. Hume, pertains only to 
 
176 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 our own world and to men; it takes in nothing be- 
 yond. But, to be complete, the demonstration must 
 take in all worlds, creatures, systems, ages, and cycles of 
 ages, and must establish the fact that in all these things 
 God never does perform, and never has performed, any 
 act by his own immediate power or will, or that no 
 world has been called into being, that no creature has 
 been made, that no event has occurred, where the only 
 antecedent in the case was the divine power and will. 
 Obviously this is wholly beyond the power of man to 
 demonstrate. There have been times in the history 
 of the universe of which no records have come to us. 
 How can man demonstrate what has or what has not 
 been done, then? There are worlds which man has 
 never seen by the naked eye or by the glass. How can 
 he demonstrate what has been or has not been done 
 in those worlds? There may be beings of whose “ ex- 
 perience” man has no knowledge. How can he de- 
 termine how they came into existence, or prove that 
 among them there are not events produced by the di- 
 rect power of God ? ~There may be worlds and systems 
 —“ nebulcee”’—that are so detached from our system that 
 we can not demonstrate that the same laws which gov- 
 ern our system control them, or that, in the infinity 
 of the divine resources, there may not be methods of 
 controlling those worlds which are unknown here. 
 How is man to determine that point ? And, moreover, 
 there may be a spiritual world—a world so detached 
 from all matter, and so wholly independent of matter, 
 that nothing can be inferred in regard to the laws 
 which govern it from the laws of Kepler or Newton. 
 Who can tell how God may act in that spiritual world ? 
 Who can demonstrate that in that world no event ever 
 occurs where the sole antecedent is the divine power 
 and the divine will ? 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. iy 
 
 As, therefore, no one can prove that there is no God 
 unless he himself is infinite, and can be present in all 
 . the immensity of space at the same time, since where 
 he is not there God may be, so it is true that no one 
 can prove that the laws of nature are so fixed and uni- 
 versal that a miracle is impossible, unless he himself 
 can take in the whole of the universe, since it may be 
 true that beyond the sphere of his knowledge there are 
 events the only antecedent of which are the will and 
 the power of God. 
 
 The observation now made, if well founded, must 
 meet all that has been said by Mr. Hume in regard to 
 “experience,” so far as that bears on the subject. When 
 it is said by him that “asa firm and unalterable ex- 
 perience has established these laws, the proof against 
 a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire 
 as any argument from experience can possibly be imag- 
 ined,” the word “experience,” if it has any meaning, 
 must refer to experience that embraces the whole sub- 
 ject ; that is, in relation to all the events to which the 
 question of such uniformity would be applicable. But 
 it is clear that among men there has been no such “ ex- 
 perience.” There have been, and there are, many events 
 which lie quite beyond any such range of observation 
 hitherto made; there are undoubtedly many things 
 which have not as yet been reduced to any known 
 laws, and it is yet an open question whether they can 
 be; that is, whether the powers of men are adequate 
 to the inquiry, and whether, if they are thus adequate, 
 the events are of such a nature that they can be re- 
 duced to regular and fixed laws. In the earlier periods 
 of the world, as already remarked, there were many 
 things that passed under the name of “ miracles” and 
 wonders—phenomena which there was no way thus of 
 
 HY 
 
178 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 accounting for—whose causes are now familiar to us, 
 for in the ruder ages of the world they seemed to lie 
 wholly in the regions of the marvelous. As science ad- . 
 vances, the circle of those marvelous works is contract- 
 ed, and a large part of those wonders is reduced to the 
 dominion of fixed laws. The laboratory of the chemist 
 now exhibits many a phenomena which in the Middle 
 Ages would have been classed among the marvelous, 
 now reduced to the regular operation of law; and it 
 can not be doubted that there may be yet in nature 
 many a secret power that has not yet been made the 
 subject of scientific observation, or been brought under 
 the general word “ experience.” It can not be regarded 
 as improbable that many of those things will thus be 
 carefully observed, arranged, and classified, and that 
 they will be found to be under the control of fixed and 
 unchanging laws ; but the world is not yet far enough 
 advanced to justify the assertion that the “ experience” 
 of mankind extends to all these things. Not until this 
 is done, and not until that “experience” shall take in 
 the whole of the distant material worlds and systems, 
 and not until that “experience” shall take in also the 
 whole of the spiritual world, could it be affirmed that 
 it has been demonstrated by “experience” that there 
 may not be events the sole antecedent of which is the 
 will and the power of God. Man can not, therefore, as 
 yet, prove that miracles are impossible. 
 
 II. The second remark in regard to miracles, as a se- 
 quence of what has already been said, is, that the effect 
 of the progress of true science is to demonstrate that 
 the hypothesis which refers miracles to unknown nat- 
 ural causes is baseless; and that if the events occurred, 
 they were veal miracles. The only possible opinions in 
 regard to the miracles of the New Testament are, that 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 179 
 
 they were not performed at all; or that they were per- 
 formed, as those who wrought them declared, in virtue 
 of a supernatural power, and in attestation of their own 
 divine mission; or that they “are distorted statements 
 of events reducible to known natural causes.” This 
 last was the solution suggested by Paulus, who pro- 
 posed to explain them on “naturalistic” principles; it is 
 adopted substantially by Prof: Baden Powell;* and it is 
 the explanation of the causes of many of the events re- 
 ferred to as miracles in the New Testament offered by 
 Renan. But, as has been already remarked, and the re- 
 mark deserves to be repeated, for it is vital to the whole 
 question, science makes no approximation to this solu- 
 tion, but its tendency has all been in the opposite direc- 
 tion—to separate these events more and more from the 
 common operations of nature. The “ experience” of the 
 world, in the observation of events, has never gone to- 
 ward the point that there is a secret power in nature to 
 raise the dead, and if the dead have been raised it has 
 been where the only antecedent in the case has been 
 the power and the will of God. ‘There remains,” there- 
 fore, “only the choice between a deeper faith and a 
 bolder unbelief; between accepting the sacred narrative 
 as a true account of miracles actually performed, and 
 rejecting it as wholly fictitious and incredible.” 
 
 The case where it is alleged that one has been raised 
 from the dead may be referred to as an illustration of 
 this point. The case supposed is this: /rst. There 
 was actual—real death. It was not a swoon; not a dis- 
 ease that for a time produced the appearance of death ; 
 not suspended animation — it was actual death. Such 
 is supposed in the case of Lazarus, and in the case of 
 
 * ¢¢On the Study of the Evidences of Christianity.” 
 + Prof. Mansel, Aids to Faith, p. 23. 
 
180 : LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Jesus himself. Second. There was a restoration to 
 real life; the restoration of the same person; the 
 preservation of personal identity. It was not a phan- 
 tasm; not an appearance; not a spirit; not an imma- 
 terial substance that deceived the senses. In the case 
 of both Lazarus and Jesus, it was a restoration to real 
 life of the same person. Both are represented as they 
 were before they died; both are recognized by their 
 friends ; both eat, walk, talk, have the same sympathies, 
 friendships, affections as before; both are cognizable 
 in all these respects as they were before they died. 
 Third. Science does not do this; does not approach it. 
 There has never been an instance in the “ experience” 
 of the world in which it has been done by natural laws; 
 there has never been an instance in which it has been 
 claimed that it has been.thus done; there has never 
 been an instance in which there has ever been an ap- 
 proach to it.. There have been instances of restoration 
 from suspended animation; there has been spasmodic 
 muscular action produced by galvanism; there may 
 have been a momentary inflation of the lungs; there 
 may have been even a smile produced on the counte- 
 nance of the dead—the horrible appearance of laughter 
 in the sardonic grin, but there has been no real life, no 
 regular heaving of the lungs, no living real smile pro- 
 duced in one who has been actually dead. Thus far the 
 “experience” of the world on this subject has been as 
 “uniform” as any experience can be, that science lays 
 no claim to the power of raising the dead. 
 
 Ii, My third remark in regard to miracles in their 
 relation to the laws of nature is, that there is a sense 
 in which those “laws of nature,” so fixed and determ- 
 ined, are constantly set. aside, or are “violated” by 
 the action of other “laws of nature,” that: is, they are 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 181 
 
 held absolutely in check so long as those other laws 
 prevail. When the lightning strikes a tree, “it puts 
 an end to all the ordinary development of vegetation,” 
 and seems to be a bare conflict of “force with law.” 
 Yet it is also true that the lightning follows a law of 
 its own, and that law seems to conflict with law, or 
 that one law sets another aside, and that there are me- 
 teorologic laws to which both the lightning and the 
 vegetation are subject.* The same thing is true when 
 the wind raises up the waters of the ocean and piles 
 them in mountains, or when the vapor is upborne and 
 carried by the clouds over valleys and hills, or when 
 the dust of the earth is raised up by the whirlwind—in 
 each case suspending, or “ violating,” for the time, the 
 law of gravitation, the most “ universal” law in nature. 
 This result is perhaps still more manifest in the princi- 
 ple of die, that mysterious and unknown principle which 
 seems to have the power, during its continuance, of 
 “violating” all the laws of nature. By that principle 
 the chemical elements which enter into the composition 
 of the oak are detached from their natural connections 
 as they are found in the air, the earth, and the waters ; 
 the chemical laws which held them in those connections 
 _are suspended; they enter, under the principle of life, 
 into new combinations, constituting now the component 
 parts of a tree—the organic structure, the fibre, the 
 bark, the branch, the leaf, the fruit—and they are held 
 together by that principle of life by all the power need- 
 ful to lift up the enormous mass from the earth, despite 
 the law of gravitation, and to keep it steadfast against 
 the influence of storms and tempests, century after centu- 
 ry, until that principle of life shall loose its grasp and be- 
 come extinct, and then, not before, the chemical laws re- 
 * Tracts for Priests and People, p. 342. 
 
182 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 sume their power, and the old oak returns to gases and 
 to earths under the resumed operation of those laws. 
 The same thing is still more strikingly manifest. in the 
 animal structure, under the principle of life. The ele- 
 ments that make up the human body—carbon, hydro- 
 gen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, lime, iron, sulphur, 
 sodium, potassium, magnesium — are all detached from 
 their natural connections in the air, the earth, and the 
 waters—in the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral 
 world—and are formed into an entirely new combina- 
 tion of bone, sinew, nerves, muscle, with a definite size 
 and shape, moulded and rounded, not by the physical 
 laws of nature, but im spite of those laws, by a principle 
 which “ violates” them for the time, and holds them as 
 long as it pleases; and it is not until /ife decays, and 
 this new power ceases, that the natural chemical laws 
 resume their functions, not now in the form of the liv- 
 ing man, but in the grave, where the human frame is 
 resolved into its natural elements. The chemical laws 
 resume their action as soon as life departs, and those 
 laws continue to act again until every particle that 
 composed the human frame enters, under those laws, 
 into new inorganic combinations, or until, under some 
 new principle of life, vegetable or animal, the process is. 
 arrested midway, and new forms of life appear. All 
 over the earth, therefore, on the land, in the waters, in 
 the air, nothing is more common than that what are 
 called the “fixed and uniform laws of nature,” those 
 laws which Mr. Hume informs us “a firm and unalter- 
 able experience has established,” are, in fact, suspended 
 —‘“violated”—held in check and abeyance—by this 
 principle of life, where life is the only antecedent in 
 the result. That a higher power than life—the Life 
 itself, God— may not suspend them; that that higher 
 
7 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 183 
 
 power may not suspend the laws which regulate life 
 itself, or restore it, has not as yet been established by a 
 “firm and unalterable experience.” 
 
 IV. In order to a proper understanding of the sub- 
 ject, it is necessary also to take into consideration the 
 element of the wil, and the power consequent on that, 
 in reference to the “laws ofnature.” However fixed and 
 settled those laws may be, the power of the will in man 
 is constantly operating to suspend or interrupt them, 
 that is, constantly producing effects which are not to be 
 traced to regular and fixed laws, and which would never 
 be produced dy those laws. In other words, the effects 
 are not produced by the laws of matter, but the laws of 
 matter are, for a time, as really disturbed as in the case 
 of a miracle, and fail of striking us as being as remark- 
 able and perplexing only because they are of constant oc- 
 currence. It might be said, indeed, that the will itself 
 is subject to fixed laws, and that, after all, the effects 
 are produced by regular and fixed laws; but it is not 
 easy to demonstrate that point, and it is not to be as- 
 sumed that this is so, or that in the operations of the 
 will there is nothing which can not be reduced to fixed 
 and unvarying laws. At any rate, whatever may be 
 true on that point, it is not to be assumed that it is any 
 more true in reference to the human will than it is in 
 reference to the divine will, and the difficulty in the 
 one case is, as to the point, the same as in the other. 
 In either case it is the introduction of a new power, 
 apart from all force in the mere physical laws of na- 
 ture, which are regarded as so settled and fixed—“ the 
 work of an agent wholly independent of those laws, 
 and who, therefore, neither obeys nor disobeys them.” 
 For the time being, so far as the result is concerned, 
 the new agent, or the new power, sets aside or sus- 
 
184 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 pends the operation of those laws, and the result in the 
 case is to be traced to the new and independent power. 
 Whether God has reserved to himself the right to 
 interfere with the regular laws of matter, as he has 
 actually conferred it on man, is simply a question 
 as to a fact, and not at all as to the posszbility of the 
 thing. 
 
 When a man, by the exertion of his will, raises his 
 arm, or walks, or lifts a weight from the ground, he, in 
 each case, suspends or overcomes, for the time, the law 
 of gravitation, so far as he produces an effect which is 
 not to be, and which can not be traced to that law—an 
 effect which that law of gravitation could never in any 
 circumstances produce, and which all the principles 
 involved in the law of gravitation combine to pre- 
 vent, and the effect produced is to be accounted for 
 wholly by a power above and regardless of it—the 
 power of the will ; and in estimating the “ experience” 
 of the world in reference to Mr. Hume’s argument, we 
 are to take that part into the account as an important 
 and a very common part of the “ experience” of man- 
 kind—a matter of “experience” quite as common as 
 that pertaining to the “firm and unalterable experi- 
 ence which has established those laws.” When a man 
 of his own will throws a stone into the air, “ the motion 
 of the stone, as soon as it has left his hand, is determ- 
 ined by a combination of purely natural laws, partly by 
 the attraction of the earth, partly by the resistance of 
 the air, partly by the magnitude and direction of the 
 force by which it was thrown.” But by what daw came 
 it to be thrown at all? By what law of nature—a law 
 “fixed by an unalterable experience”—did it happen 
 that it left its quiet bed on the ground; that the prin- 
 ciple of inertia was overcome; that the law of gravita- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 185 
 
 tion which held it there, and would have held it there 
 forever, was interrupted, and that it commenced its 
 course through the air? Neither the law of gravita- 
 tion by itself, nor all the laws of nature put together, 
 would ever have caused it to leave the ground and com- 
 mence that flight through the air; but all the laws of 
 “nature,” in fact, combined to resist this, as really as 
 the laws of “nature” combined to resist. the raising up 
 of Lazarus to life, or as the laws of “nature” on the Sea 
 of Tiberias combined to keep up the storm, and to re- 
 sist the power of Jesus, who commanded the winds and 
 the waves to be still. It remains yet to be proved, not 
 asserted, that when God’s free will interposes to pro- 
 duce effects which are to be traced to that will alone, 
 there is a more 7ea@/ violation of the laws of nature than 
 there is when the human will interposes and produces 
 changes which are to be traced to that will alone. It 
 may be further added, that if the will of men does pro- 
 duce such disturbances and interruptions of the laws of 
 nature, then, so far from its being true, as Mr. Hume says, 
 that “a firm and unalterable experience has established 
 those laws,” it is true that there is almost nothing that 
 is more liable to be disturbed, or that nothing is more 
 common than that there are effects produced which are 
 not to be traced to those laws, but where the only 
 known antecedent is wll, and the power consequent on 
 will. | 
 
 V. A fifth and final remark on the subject is, that the 
 progress of our world, and, as far as we know, the prog- 
 ress of the universe, has no¢ been under the operation 
 of regular and fixed “laws.” I mean that there are ey- 
 idences of divine interposition apart from the operation 
 of such laws, and that the results are such as can not 
 be traced to those laws, but. are to be traced to a direct 
 
186 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 divine interposition, and that, therefore, miracles are not 
 in themselves absurd or impossible. 
 
 There are two methods in which, subsequent to the 
 act of creation, the existing state of things on the earth, 
 and in the universe at large, as far as we know, has 
 been produced: the one is by development, or the 
 growth of things under natural laws; the other is by 
 the introduction of a new order of things, into which no 
 former state naturally runs, or which, in no proper sense, 
 can be the result of any antecedents in nature, but which 
 must be traced to a mere interposition of power. 
 
 That the former—that of development—exists, no one 
 can doubt; and it can not be denied that this is the reg- 
 ular and ordinary course of things; that is, that there 
 is something which, in the order of nature, precedes the 
 effect; which is the cause of it; which measures it; 
 which contains in embryo all that is produced. Thus 
 the germ of the acorn is developed into the oak, and the 
 ovum is developed into the crocodile, the ostrich, and 
 the barn-yard fowl; thus the slumbering powers of the 
 infant are developed into the physical strength, the 
 poetic genius, or the eloquence of the man. In all such 
 cases there is nothing produced which is not a fair un- 
 folding of what existed in the germ; nothing which is 
 the result of mere power ab extra. The precise limit 
 of this class of operations in nature has not yet been 
 fixed. It is well known that attempts have been made 
 to explain all the phenomena of the universe on this 
 principle. The author of the “ Vestiges of Creation” re- 
 gards this as a sufficient explanation of the origin of 
 the worlds and systems which compose the universe ; 
 Dr. Darwin supposes that all the varieties of species on 
 the earth can be explained on this principle; and in this 
 manner it is supposed, as may be true, that new worlds 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 187 
 
 are constantly forming, and that the nebulous masses 
 are now resolving themselves into suns and stars. Per- 
 haps it is not within the range of the human powers to 
 determine the exact limits of this process, and to do it 
 is not material for any purpose connected with revealed 
 religion. 
 
 But, while we would concede all that true science 
 can ask on this point, it is still a fact that this has not 
 been the sole or the main agency by which our world 
 exists as it is now. In very many respects it has made 
 advances—has reached higher elevations from age to 
 age—by some new power, the result of creative and su- 
 pernatural agency, that has come in, over and beyond 
 any thing that can be regarded as the result of devel- 
 opment. That power lifts the world to a higher level, 
 and can be best explained on the supposition that it is 
 by direct divine interposition; that is, that the antece- 
 dent in the case is the will and the power of God, 
 whether that be called mzracle or not. 
 
 (a) The ordinary law is, as is claimed by the Atheist 
 for the whole, by a gradual accumulation and develop- 
 ment. Men record and preserve the results of past ex- 
 perience. ‘The world gathers up the lessons of the ex- 
 periments that are made; the history of failures and 
 successes; the inventions in the arts and the discoy- 
 eries in science; the issues of the experiments to abridge 
 labor, to facilitate travel, to promote domestic comfort, 
 to till the soil, to improve the wild fruits, trees, and 
 grasses; in building houses, in machinery, in navigation. 
 In like manner the world treasures up the wisdom of 
 sages; the results of the battles for freedom; the ex- 
 periments made in government; the methods of educa- 
 tion; the rules of prudence that regulate domestic life. 
 All these enter into civilization, and we now, in this age 
 
188 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 and land, are enjoying the avails of all the past wisdom, 
 _all the sacrifices, all the toils and perils, and all the dis- 
 coveries of past ages. Every philosopher has thought 
 for us; every legislator has legislated for us; every 
 traveler has traveled for us; every explorer of unknown 
 lands and seas has done it for us; every patriot has 
 fought and bled for us; every martyr has died for us. 
 Every one who has stricken out an invention in the arts 
 has done it for us, and every one who has made a dis- 
 covery in science has done it for us. Faust in the art of 
 printing; Gioia, of Amalfi, in discovering the properties 
 of the magnet; Galileo in constructing the telescope; 
 Watt and Fulton in applying steam to the purposes of 
 manufactures, or to travel by sea and by land; Frank- 
 lin, who “wregted the lightning from heaven and the 
 sceptre from tyrants,’* and Morse, who applied the 
 laws of electro-magnetism to the communication of 
 thought, did it for us. We recline on beds of down, 
 and sit down at tables loaded with luxuries, and dwell 
 in houses of comfort or magnificence, and travel rapidly 
 and safely over lands and seas, and breathe the pure air 
 of freedom as the result of the wisdom and toil of all 
 past ages. The world gathers up the results of the 
 past, and rises gradually to a higher elevation; from 
 that point it does not go backward, for nothing thus 
 accumulated that is valuable is suffered to be lost. 
 Society and the world in this respect move slowly ; 
 for often dark and dreary centuries elapse when the 
 world seems to make no progress—like those slow re- 
 volving ages, and cycles of ages, when the deposits 
 were made in the waters which now constitute the 
 rocks, or which, upheaved by some sudden conyul- 
 sion, constitute the mountains, and bring the beds of 
 
 * Eripuit coelis fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 189 
 
 ancient coal, deposited for man, to the surface of the 
 earth. 
 
 (6) There is another method in which the world ad- 
 vances. It isnot gradual, but sudden—per saltwm—by 
 impulse, not by development. It occurs when the af- 
 fairs of the world are to be put on a higher level; when 
 the slow process of accumulation, experience, and de- 
 velopment would not meet the wants of the world; 
 when the race is to be lifted up suddenly, as the mount- 
 ains were lifted up, or as the bed of the ocean was sud- 
 denly raised to become the abode of races of living 
 beings. Then God creates some great genius and 
 brings it upon the earth. Then some great invention 
 occurs which at once puts the race on a higher level. 
 Then some discovery in science is made that affects at 
 once all the interests of society; that opens new ave- 
 nues of trade; that facilitates commerce; that diffuses 
 intelligence; that levels mountains; that exalts valleys; 
 that bridges streams or even oceans; that binds the 
 nations into one. Then a new level is reached at once, 
 which in the ordinary course of things would not have 
 been reached for centuries, if it could have been reached 
 at all. The world rises at once to a higher plateau, and 
 moves forward ov that, under the slow law of accumu- 
 lation, till the time arrives when, by some new discov- 
 ery or new invention, it rises still higher, never again 
 to go backward. 
 
 The immediate and efficient antecedent in this is 
 the will and the power of God. It is not by the devel- 
 opment of a germ; it is not by the cultivation and ex- 
 pansion of that which before existed in embryo. Ge- 
 nius and talent are the creation of God—created when 
 he pleases; lodged where he pleases; developed under 
 such circumstances as he chooses. Be it poetry, elo- 
 
190 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 quence, inventive power, skill in the fine or the useful 
 arts, it is alike the creation of God. 
 
 It is creation—beginning anew, not development— 
 created, not called into existence by circumstances. So 
 God made the mind of Plato, of Socrates, of Newton, 
 of Bacon, of Pascal, of Edwards, of Alfred, Charle- 
 magne, Fulton, Cuvier, Columbus, Washington. The 
 bringing of such minds upon the earth can be regarded 
 as in no proper sense the result of such a “ firm and-un- 
 alterable experience in establishing the laws of nature” 
 as Mr. Hume speaks of; they are as much the result of 
 a divine agency as the creation of the world, or as the 
 healing of the blind man at the Pool of Bethesda. 
 
 So, too, the world advanced, as geologists now tell 
 us, before it was fitted for the abode of man, by a series 
 of successive creations. One race of beings was swept 
 away —not developed into another, Each order of 
 monsters had, its day, and then passed off the stage, to 
 give place to ahigher order. The essential fact on the 
 subject, which no man who is properly informed will 
 deny, and which is now stated by geologists as a part 
 of the teaching of their science, is, that entire races 
 were swept away, and were succeeded by others which 
 were in no sense whatever developments of the former— 
 new creations ; new forms of being on the earth—crea- 
 tures, or forms of being so distinct that the one could 
 not have lived at all in the condition in which the earth 
 then was, and the other was swept away because the 
 earth had become fitted for a higher order of beings. 
 The old monsters—the Plesiosaurian and Ichthyosau- 
 rian races—have no successors on earth. The races were 
 swept entirely away, and all that remains of them is 
 found in the rocks. The fossils of the old geological 
 periods reveal successive creations, not successive devel- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 191 
 
 opments. So man appeared at last, not as a develop- 
 ment of the ourang-outang or monkey, but as a new 
 creation—brought upon the stage by creative power 
 when the earth had been fitted up for his abode. In 
 all science there is probably no fact better established 
 than the one now adverted to, that the races were en- 
 tirely swept off, not developed into new forms or races, 
 and that a new creation appeared, in no sense a resur- 
 rection from the old, and that, perhaps, in each case, 
 after an interval of millions of years. 
 
 Thus the world advances, also, by some new inven- 
 tion in the arts that can in no proper sense be regarded 
 as a “development” of a previous order of things, or as 
 the result of “ fixed and certain laws.” Such inventions 
 are often the result, perhaps always, of a suggestion 
 that comes into the mind, having nothing’ to do with 
 any thing that went before, that can be traced by no 
 law of association to any previous thought in the mind, 
 and whose origin no system of mental philosophy will 
 explain. The suggestion which gives birth to the in- 
 vention is retained in the mind while a thousand others 
 are dismissed ; it is reflected on; it is conned, matured, 
 experimented on, until the invention appears before the 
 world, modifying human affairs, raising the race to a 
 higher level, lifting it up on a new steppe or plateau, 
 along which it travels, or by the help of which it rises 
 higher, until some newer invention, still more brilliant 
 and important than any which preceded, shall lift the 
 race to a higher level still, and be the cause of a still 
 higher advancement. Thus the discoveries of the art 
 of writing, of printing, of gunpowder ; of the properties 
 of the magnet, of the telescope, of the microscope, of the 
 application of steam, of the telegraph, have successively 
 modified human affairs, and put the condition of the 
 
192 - LECTURES ON THE 
 
 world on an elevation from which it can never descend 
 —not by “fixed laws;” not by “development ;” not by 
 a “firm and unalterable experience,” but by a new 
 power. 
 
 In like manner, some new disease sent direct from 
 God may materially modify human affairs. The “ black 
 death” that reigned in Europe, cutting off, as has been 
 estimated, during the six years of its continuance, twen- 
 ty-five millions, or a fourth part of the inhabitants of 
 Europe,* depopulating entire districts of country, and 
 spreading consternation every where—in what sense 
 was that a development, “under the laws of a firm and 
 unalterable experience,” as Mr. Hume would say? The 
 small-pox, the cholera—to what “laws,” thus fixed and 
 settled by “ experience,” are they to be traced? Of what 
 previous disease were they the development? Nothing 
 is more certain than that, up to the period of their ap- 
 pearing, the “experience” of the world— of the whole 
 world— was against the small-pox and the cholera, 
 much more than it had been against miraculous and su- 
 pernatural agencies, and, according to the argument 
 which I am examining, all belief in those diseases is im- 
 possible or absurd. 
 
 The cases to which I have thus referred show that 
 God has not bound or pledged himself to govern the 
 world always, and in all circumstances, by the fixed 
 laws of nature; that he has not withdrawn from the 
 world and left it to do its work, as a vast machine, by 
 wheels, and springs, and cogs, and pulleys; that he has 
 reserved to himself the right to interfere when he has 
 important ends to accomplish, by his own free will, in 
 some manner corresponding to the fact, though far 
 above it, that we thus, by owr will, interfere with those 
 
 * [Tecker’s Epidemics of the Middle Ages, p. 29. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 193 
 
 laws; that, as there were occasions on which it was 
 proper that he should interfere by new acts of creative 
 power in the old geological periods of the world, and 
 when the present order of things was to be inaugu- 
 rated, so he may now interpose by acts of creation in 
 the distant parts of the universe by bringing new worlds 
 into being, and new orders of creatures upon them; and 
 that, as there have been occasions when the affairs of the 
 world were to be raised to a higher elevation by the 
 creation and endowment of some mind by extraordinary 
 powers, or by some brilliant discovery in science or in- 
 vention in the arts, so there may have been occasions on 
 which it was proper to interfere by the introduction of 
 a new religion upon the earth, and by attesting its ori- 
 gin as from himself—by so far putting forth his own 
 will and power,.independeut of natural laws, and sus- 
 pending those laws for the time, as to open the eyes of 
 the blind, to unstop the ears of the deaf, to cause the 
 lame man to leap as an hart, and to raise the dead from 
 their graves. 
 
 Such are the facts in regard to miracles, as I under- 
 stand them, and such is the state of the evidence on the 
 subject in the nineteenth century. 
 
 I 
 
194 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT FOR THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY, IN 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, FROM PROPHECY. 
 
 THE argument for the truth of Christianity or re-- 
 vealed religion, as derived from prophecy, is different, 
 in some very important respects, from the argument-as 
 derived from miracles. 
 
 (1.) First. The miracles on which reliance is placed 
 occurred in past ages—in periods now far remote. It 
 is not claimed by the friends of the Bible that miracles 
 are now performed to establish its truth. Even in those 
 portions of the “ visible Church” where it is claimed that 
 miracles are still performed, it is not maintained that 
 they are performed to confirm the general truths of rev- 
 elation; to demonstrate that the prophets and apostles 
 were sent from God; or to prove that the Christian re- 
 ligion, as distinguished from other religions, is true, but 
 that, they are wrought in favor of some dogma of the 
 Church; or in honor of the memory of some particular 
 saint; or to show that the church in which such mira- 
 cles occur is the true Church, in contradistinction from 
 other associations which claim to be parts of the true 
 Church; in honor of the faith, or of the priesthood, of 
 some one branch of the Church of God. 
 
 The miracles, however, on which reliance is placed 
 for the proof of Christianity as such, occurred in a pe- 
 riod now far in the past; they were witnessed by com- 
 paratively few persons; and the evidence that they 
 were performed at all comes to us under all the disad- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 195 
 
 vantages of testimony transmitted through successive 
 generations. We ourselves have not been permitted to 
 witness the performance of a miracle in attestation to 
 the truth of our religion, nor, when urging the claims 
 to the divine origin of that religion from miracles, and 
 seeking to convince our fellow-men of its truth on that 
 ground, can we appeal to one actually wrought in their 
 presence or in our own, as furnishing such a demonstra- 
 tion. It was, therefore, not difficult to construct the 
 plausible argument of Mr, Hume against miracles—an 
 argument so plausible that to this day it has not been 
 found easy to detect its sophistry. But, whether that 
 argument was well founded or was a sophism, no such 
 sophism, and, at any rate, no such argument, can be sug- 
 gested in regard to prophecy. It is a subject which we 
 can investigate as eye-witnesses ourselves. We have 
 the prophecy before us in fixed and permanent language, 
 to be interpreted on principles universally recognized 
 in the interpretation of language, and where the friends 
 and the foes of the religion in defense of which they are 
 adduced are supposed to be equally qualified to under- | 
 stand the use of language and the rules of exegesis, and 
 to have an equal right to apply those rules. The very 
 words of the prophecy may be carefully studied, and 
 may be calmly compared with the facts to which it 
 is claimed they are applicable. It is not like a mira- 
 cle, to be seen at the exact moment of the occurrence 
 or not at all; it is not like the word, the look, or the 
 touch, that restores sight to the blind, or that heals 
 diseases; it is not like the voice that stills the tem- 
 pest, or that raises the dead, and then is silent for- 
 ever. The witnesses of such scenes, and the actors in 
 such scenes, pass from the world in a single generation, 
 nor can we call them on the “stand” again to subject 
 
196 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 them to a rigorous “ cross-examination.” In prophecy, 
 ‘however, every thing can be exaniined with all the 
 calmness required by the principles of the inductive 
 philosophy. All is before us that there 7s in the case, 
 and will remain there as long as we please. The words 
 of the prophecy and the facts are neither of them evan- 
 escent, and are as fixed as the substances which the 
 chemist. coolly examines in his laboratory, or as the 
 stars on which the astronomer gazes, night after night, 
 at his leisure. 
 
 (2.) Second. In the argument from prophecy there 
 can be no doubt about the facts in the case. In the ar- 
 gument from miracles, the main point of the inquiry re- 
 lates to the facts themselves. If the alleged facts are 
 admitted to have occurred—if Lazarus was actually 
 raised from the dead—there would be no difference of 
 opinion that would embarrass us in regard to the a- 
 gument ; that is, that it was an event produced by the 
 immediate power and will of God, irrespective of nat- 
 ural laws. The whole effort of infidelity, therefore, 
 in regard to a miracle, is to set aside the evidence 
 that the fact occurred, not to deny the force of the 
 argument derived from it if the fact is established. 
 In prophecy, the argument assumes a different form. 
 Respecting the main facts in the case there can be 
 no question, and if there were a question, it could be 
 readily examined and determined. If any man doubts 
 whether Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed, 
 he has only to look into Josephus or Gibbon to sat- 
 isfy his mind of the fact. If he doubts whether Baby- 
 lon, Tyre, Petra, or Nineveh are in ruins, he has only 
 to look into Volney, or Burckhardt, or Maundrell, or 
 Layard, or to go to the places of their former mag- 
 nificence, and seat himself amidst the ruins of their 
 
. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 197 
 
 grandeur, and, “book in hand,” compare, at his leisure, 
 their present state with the predictions in the prophets. 
 He may take his own time for the examination; he may 
 look at the ruins fragment by fragment, and compare, 
 with the minutest and most patient detail, the facts be- 
 fore him with the statements in the prophets. He may 
 sit down to the argument with as much coolness as he 
 would to a mathematical demonstration, and survey the 
 evidence as calmly as he does that which enters into 
 the inductive philosophy.. In a miracle, a voice spake 
 loud, solemn, and clear, as when the tempest was hushed 
 on the Sea of Tiberias, or when Lazarus was raised from 
 the grave, and then the voice died away. In prophecy, 
 a voice speaks still from solitary Petra, from ruined 
 Tyre, from the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, from 
 the exhumed palaces of Nineveh, from the midst of the 
 “wild beasts of the desert,” and the “ doleful creatures,” 
 and the “owls that dwell” in Babylon, and the “ satyrs 
 that dance there,” and the “ wild beasts that cry” in its 
 “desolate houses,” and the “dragons in its pleasant 
 palaces,’* to all generations. From their deep silence; 
 from the palaces where once was the sound of the viol 
 and the harp; from the forsaken temples, an utterance 
 is heard still responding to the ancient prophetic warn- 
 ing. We hear the cry of the “ bittern” and the “owl” 
 proclaiming the fulfillment of the prophecies of Isaiah; 
 and the “dance of the satyr” and the “cry of the wild 
 beasts” invite the world to contemplate the truth of the 
 ancient predictions. 
 
 (3.) Third. There is another. point of difference be- 
 tween miracles and prophecy. The proof from the 
 former was complete in the time of the apostles; the 
 proof from the latter is increased and strengthened 
 
 * Tsaiah, xiil., 21, 22. 
 
198 LECTURES ON THE ° 
 
 from age to age, and will be augmenting to the end of 
 the world. It is accumulating with every new fact in 
 history, and will go forward to meet the incredulity of 
 all coming times. In this respect these two sources of 
 evidence bear some resemblance to the demonstration 
 of God’s wisdom and power in the creation of the world, 
 and in its providential government. The act of crea- 
 tion, grand and awful, when the “morning stars sang 
 together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,” was 
 an impressive demonstration of his power, a stupendous 
 miracle that put the question of his omnipotence for- 
 ever to rest, as the stilling of the tempest and the 
 resurrection of Lazarus did that of the Savior. But 
 the wisdom of God, and the goodness of God, and the 
 mercy of God, shine forth from age to age, and the ar- 
 gument is presented fresh and new to each generation. 
 The evidence is repeated with each revolving year; 
 with each returning season; with each opening flower ; 
 with the running stream; with the dews of the morn- 
 ing and the zephyrs of the evening; and with the con- 
 version and salvation of each penitent sinner, as the 
 evidence of the truth of religion from prophecy meets 
 each coming generation, and will attend the race until 
 the proclamation “the kingdoms of this world are be- 
 come the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and 
 he shall reign forever and ever,” shall be heard through- 
 out the universe.* 
 
 God might have made the human mind—might have 
 made all created minds—so as to foresee the future as 
 well as to remember the past. In the nature of things 
 there is no more difficulty in the one case than in the 
 other; and, at all events, no one can prove that this is 
 impossible. God’s own mind is thus constituted, if it 
 
 * Revs xi, 46; 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 199 
 
 be proper to apply the words future and past to hin ; 
 and, in creating other minds in the “image” of his own, 
 it was, and must have been, a matter dependent on his 
 will and wisdom whether they should be endowed in 
 the same manner. 
 
 Man was made in the “image” of God. In the knowl- 
 edge of the past, or in retaining the memory of the past, 
 we see clearly that he was, in this respect, made in the 
 “image” of his Creator. If he had been endowed with 
 the power of looking into the future, the fact that he 
 bore the “image” of his Creator would have been still 
 more apparent and striking. In the purpose to create 
 him in his “image,” it was for God himself to judge how 
 Jar that “image,” in respect to power, and knowledge, 
 and wisdom, in treasuring up the memory of the past, 
 and in anticipating the future, was to be extended. 
 Obviously there must be a limit in all these things im- 
 measurably this side of his own infinity, whatever might 
 be the capacity of man for extending this in an indefi- 
 nite approximation in the future toward the infinity of 
 God. There are lines which approach each other for- 
 ever, but which never meet. 
 
 In regard to events lying in the past and in the fu- 
 ture, God chose, in making man, that he should be en- 
 dowed with the power of retaining the one, but with no 
 power of looking directly into the other; as he chose, in 
 regard to power, that that power on the part of man 
 should extend only to those things which pertain to 
 natural or physical laws, retaining the power above 
 those laws of creating or destroying —the power of 
 miracles—to himself. This arrangement, among other 
 results, lays the foundation for furnishing a proof of a 
 _ divine revelation, on the one hand by miracles, and on 
 the other by prophecy—the power of setting aside the 
 
200 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ordinary laws of nature at his pleasure in the one case, 
 and the power, in the other case, of foretellng what man 
 otherwise could never know. 
 
 There were reasons, quite obvious in the main, why 
 this should be so in respect to past and future events. 
 
 On the one hand, in reference to the past, it was of 
 the highest importance to the well-being of man, if not 
 to his very existence, to the progress of society, to all 
 just views of responsibility, to the formation of his own 
 character, that he should be so endowed as to gather 
 up and retain the past—the past in his own individual 
 experience; the past in the progress of society. Char- 
 acter is formed in this way by availing ourselves of our 
 past attainments and past experience. Responsibility 
 rests on this, for there could be no just and adequate 
 views of retribution if all our thoughts, and plans, and 
 words, and deeds were at once effaced forever, as the 
 figures and letters that we trace in the sand on the sea- 
 shore are by the next wave. ‘To all just notions of re- 
 sponsibility, our thoughts, and words, and deeds must 
 be as if “they were graven with an iron pen and lead 
 in the rock forever” (Job,xix., 24). Society makes prog- 
 ress in this way by treasuring up the accumulated wis- 
 dom of the past —the results of all happy inventions, 
 of all struggles for freedom, of all improvements in the 
 arts, and of all the profound sayings of sages and phi- 
 losophers. The present state of the world in civiliza- 
 tion, in science, in the arts, in domestic comforts, in the 
 enjoyment of liberty, in religion, is the result of the fact 
 that man is endowed with the faculty of memory. 
 
 On the other hand, there would have been equal dis- 
 advantages in thus endowing man in regard to the fu- 
 ture, enabling him to see the future as he can retain 
 the past. Such an arrangement would have done much 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 201 
 
 to stifle effort and to weaken the stimulus to enterprise 
 and exertion, for much of that effort and that stimulus 
 depends on the fact that a thing #s unknown but may 
 be known; that a discovery may be made that will 
 contribute to wealth or fame; and that the human pow- 
 ers may find employment and pleasure in the discovery. 
 Thus the young are stimulated to make attainments in 
 literature and science, because there are vast fields yet 
 unexplored, and to a noble-minded youth it is all the 
 better if not a ray of light has been shed upon them ; 
 nor would such a youth thank any one to stop the 
 career of noble thought and the path of discovery by 
 pouring down a flood of light on all those regions, so 
 that no more should be left for the efforts of honorable 
 ambition. It was this which animated Columbus when 
 the prow of his vessel first crossed the line beyond 
 which a ship had ever sailed, and plunged into unknown 
 seas. Every wave that was thrown up had a new in- 
 terest and beauty from the fact that its repose had nev- 
 er been disturbed before by the keel of a vessel; and 
 when his eye first saw the land, and he prostrated him- 
 self and kissed the earth, his glory was at the highest, 
 for he saw what in all ages was unknown before. So 
 we are every where stimulated and animated by the 
 unknowh, by what is before us that may be gained, by 
 the fields of new thought which man has never ex» 
 plored.* Farther, what a world of sorrow might this 
 be if we saw the future as we remember the past! Who 
 would desire it? Who would be willing that all that 
 is to occur to him or to his family during a single year 
 should be spread out before him on the first day of the 
 
 * Avia Pieridum peragro loca, nullius ante 
 Trita solo; juvat integros accedere fonteis ; 
 Atque haurire.—Lucretius. 
 
 12 
 
202 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 year? How many dwellings would such a knowledge 
 fill with grief! If, at the beginning of a year, we knew 
 that a beloved child was to sicken and die ; if the scene 
 ‘was all spread out before us; if we saw the exact prog- 
 ress of the disease, and knew the exact hour when it 
 would terminate fatally, how sad would be our feelings 
 as we looked on that child; how sad to us the weeks, 
 and days, and hours, as the fatal hour drew on! How 
 many dwellings in the land would be filled with grief, 
 and how many would be the sorrows which would be 
 added to a now wretched world ! 
 
 God, therefore, while he has so far made us after his 
 own “image” that we can retain the memory of the 
 past, has mercifully limited our endowments in the oth- 
 er direction, and hidden the future, in a great measure, 
 from our view. 
 
 Yet, while this is true as a great law, it is to be re- 
 marked, and the purpose of this argument requires es- 
 pecially that it should be before our minds in order 
 that we may understand exactly what prophecy is, that 
 there ave certain endowments of the hnman mind which 
 have reference to the future, and it is material so to dis- 
 tinguish them as to show that they do not amount to 
 the idea, or invade the province of prophecy, or to show 
 how prophecy is distinguished from those enddwments. 
 
 » The powers of the human mind, inspired or unin- 
 spired, as they are exercised in this world in relation to 
 the future, must be arranged under the following heads: 
 Hope, mathematical calculation, sagacity, prophecy. 
 
 Hope.—This has relation, indeed, to the future, but 
 not to the knowledge of the future. It predicts noth- 
 ing; it makes nothing certain. Hope, founded on a 
 probability or possibility in regard to the future, on 
 the common course of human events, or on special prom- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 203 
 
 ises, does much indeed to stimulate men to effort, and 
 to cheer a dark and suffering world, but it does nothing 
 to determine the future, except as that future itself is 
 determined ‘by efforts inspired by hope. It in itself 
 makes nothing certain. It gilds the future, indeed, with 
 much that is bright, but with that which is imaginary, 
 and which is, therefore, much of it a mere illusion. It 
 makes the world appear brighter than the reality, and 
 is a benevolent arrangement — one of those numerous 
 things which occur in the world, often underlying other 
 things, which show that the Creator of the world is a 
 benevolent Being, and intends, at the same time, to 
 stimulate human effort, to cheer man in his sad and 
 dark path, and to keep before him the prospect of a 
 brighter world than this. It is not, however, a decep- 
 tion. Though it does not always correspond with the 
 reality, though the anticipation is often brighter than 
 the result, though youth is cheered and stimulated 
 more than age is, or than youth would be if it had a 
 clear view of the reality of things, it is not a designed 
 illusion, for man is not kept ignorant of the fact that 
 there may be disappointment, and,no promise which 
 God has made in the arrangements by which hope is 
 inspired is violated, for all those promises are made 
 with this condition well understood, and none which he 
 has absolutely made ever fail. The labor of the hus- 
 bandman may fail; the ship richly freighted may en- 
 counter a storm and sink in the ocean; health may 
 fail; life may be cut off before its plans are developed 
 and its hopes matured; the fig-tree may not blossom, 
 and there may be no fruit in the vines; the labor of the 
 olive may fail, and the fields may yield no meat; the 
 flock may be cut off from the fold, and there may be 
 no hind in the stalls (Habakkuk, i1., 17); yet still, on 
 
204 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the average, the promises of hope are sufficiently real 
 to stimulate effort, and to cheer and encourage man; 
 but it does not enable him to penetrate the dark fu- 
 ture, and to tell what that wll be. , 
 Mathematical calcwlation.—Here, such is the stabil- 
 ity of the laws of nature, that the knowledge of the fu- 
 ture, within the sphere of such calculations, is minute 
 and absolute, provided the present system shall remain, 
 and provided God shall not interfere by his own direct 
 will and power to change it. To neither of these points 
 does it extend. But within its own sphere it is certain, 
 and is, except prophecy, the most absolute knowledge 
 which we have of the future. 
 In this we can not go beyond what the case will jus- 
 tify in our admiration of the endowments of man. The 
 knowledge thus within the grasp of the human mind 
 shows perhaps more than any thing else his wonderful 
 greatness and power. ‘The position of the heavenly 
 bodies at any time, however remote in the future; an 
 eclipse of the sun or moon; the transit of a star; the re- 
 turn of a comet after, in a wild, eccentric course, it has 
 buried itself in the depths of ether, and traversed for 
 years or centuries those unfathomed regions—all these 
 show the greatness of man; show the greatness of the 
 God who made him, and who has made a system so ac- 
 curate in its movements, and so vast and enduring. 
 Yet all this has a limit, and a limit far—far inside of 
 what prophecy undertakes to do. It is confined to 
 physical laws. It leaves out the whole element of will 
 —that on which so many of the events of prophecy ac- 
 tually turn—the will of princes, of statesmen, of war- 
 riors, of the numberless hosts of human beings engaged 
 in civil affairs or in battle, whose separate purposes may 
 enter into the result. It proceeds on the supposition 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 205. 
 
 that the order of events will not be disturbed by the 
 divine will—a thing of which no astronomer can be 
 sure. It has littl—nothing to do with the common af- 
 fairs of life; with the things which enter into commerce, 
 arts, discoveries, inventions, improvements, poetry, elo- 
 quence, and song; with the duration of cities and em- 
 pires; with the great men that may come and play 
 their part, and then disappear. Who among the gifted 
 men of our race can foretell these things ? 
 Sagacity.—This is a power of penetrating the future 
 to a certain extent, given to man for important pur- 
 poses; a power on which much of the success of the 
 life of an individual, and much of the prosperity of na- 
 tions may depend. It has every evidence of being a 
 divine arrangement, for it lies in the direction of ex- 
 alted genius, and can not be the result of mere educa- 
 tion, training, or experience.» In a humble form it ex- 
 ists in most minds; it is quite indispensable to the suc- 
 cessful prosecution of business ; it serves much to dis- 
 tinguish one man from another in the same calling in 
 life. The success of one merchant above another; the 
 success of one banker above another—nay, the success 
 of one farmer above another, may as often be traced to 
 that sagacity which looks into the future, and antici- 
 pates the changes in the commercial world which will 
 be likely to occur, as to any other endowment. In its 
 higher forms, as in cases like those of Burke and Can- 
 ning, it seems almost to approach the region of inspira- 
 tion and prophecy. In its humbler forms, and perhaps 
 in its higher forms, it is capable of cultivation by expe- 
 rience; by reading; by an increased knowledge of the 
 ordinary course of events; by a calculation of probabil- 
 ities; by an acquaintance with the past. The states- 
 man combines his knowledge of the experience of the 
 world with his own power of penetrating the future ; 
 
206 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the sagacity of the merchant is often almost the mere 
 result of large and long observation and experience. 
 
 In either case, however, it never rises to certainty; 
 it is never prophecy. It makes mention of no names; 
 it specifies no dates; it enters into no particulars—no 
 details. It draws out the plans of no battles or sieges 
 on land, and no naval conflicts; it brings no actors by 
 name on the stage; it describes no burning towns, no 
 wasted fields, no permanent desolations, no future con- 
 dition of cities, states, or empires. Burke’s celebrated 
 prediction of the consequences of a “ Regicide Peace” is 
 of the most general character; enters into no details; 
 anticipates no history in dates and names, and leaves 
 no impression on the mind of what the details would 
 be. In one of the most splendid passages in the English 
 language, Macaulay ventures a suggestion in regard to 
 the time when London may be a scene of wide desola- 
 tion, and imagines an inhabitant of New Zealand, on 
 the ruins of London Bridge, sketching the ruins of St. 
 Paul’s. Speaking of the Roman Catholic Church, he 
 says, in that passage: “She saw the commencement of 
 all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical estab- 
 lishments that now exist in the world, and we feel no 
 assurance that she is not destined to see the end of 
 them all. She was great and respected before the 
 Saxon had set foot on Britain—before the Frank had 
 passed the Rhine—when Grecian eloquence still flour- 
 ished at Antioch—when idols were still worshiped in 
 the Temple of Mecca; and she may still exist in un- 
 diminished vigor when some traveler from New Zea- 
 land shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand 
 
 on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins 
 of: St. Paul’s,?* | 
 
 * Review of Ranke’s History of the Popes. Miscellanies, vol. iii., 
 p. 820, 321. 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 207 
 
 This is splendid writing; this is eloquence of lan- 
 guage; this is sublime in the description of what might 
 —of what may occur. But it is not prophecy. If he 
 had said that this will be, it would be prophecy ; and if 
 he had gone into detail, as Isaiah has done in regard to 
 a city larger in its area than even modern London, and 
 concerning which, at the time, there was as little prob- 
 ability that it would be a “vast solitude” as there is 
 that London will be; if he had said, as Isaiah does, “ It 
 shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in 
 from generation to generation; but wild beasts of the 
 desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of 
 doleful creatures ; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs 
 shall dance there; and the wild beasts of the islands 
 shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their 
 pleasant palaces; I will make it a possession for the 
 bittern, and pools of water; and I will sweep it.with the 
 besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts” (Isaiah, 
 XUL, 20-22; xiv., 23), ¢7s would have been prophecy. 
 
 Except by prophecy—by direct inspiration of God— 
 the power of man in regard to the future is limited by 
 those things which have now been adverted to. His 
 desires, indeed, his efforts have not been bounded by 
 these things, nor has he been satisfied by this arrange- 
 ment; for there is no one thing that he has more 
 longed for, or for which he has struggled more, than to 
 penetrate the dark veil which shuts out the future, and 
 to make his own power in regard to the future corre- 
 spond with his power over the past. By the interpret- 
 ation of dreams; by consultation of the stars; by at- 
 tempting to make compacts with the dead to induce 
 them to disclose the secret which is supposed to be in 
 their possession; by mysterious combinations of num- 
 bers; by oracles; by torturing nature to make it dis- 
 
208 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 close the secret; by somnambulism; by spiritualism ; 
 by the flight of birds; by inspecting the entrails of an- 
 imals; by the supposed visitations of the gods, and the 
 return of the departed to the earth, men have sought to 
 set aside the great law which God has ordained on this 
 subject, but in vain. Man reaches distant worlds by 
 the telescope; he whispers so as to be heard across 
 continents, sending his thoughts beneath the waves of 
 the ocean, and over deserts and mountains; he chron- 
 icles the centuries lying back of all recorded history, 
 by which the earth was slowly moulded to be the resi- 
 dence of living beings; he marks with unerring precis- 
 ion the movements of far distant worlds, but not one 
 thing in the future, even that which is nearest to him, 
 can he learn; not one response can he get to all the 
 modes in which he asks the question, What ts to be to- 
 morrow ? 
 
 Prophecy is the only thing which discloses that, and 
 to that we now turn with the inquiry whether, to any 
 extent and for any purpose, God has lifted the veil and 
 disclosed the future to man? If he has, it is a miracle, 
 like any other miracle. The power to disclose the fu- 
 ture, like the power to create a world or to raise the 
 dead, is beyond the power of man. The limitation in 
 the one case is in regard to time; in the other in re- 
 gard to power. In either case, all beyond is of God. 
 The one is miracle, the other is prophecy. 
 
 The following things are essential to prophecy: 
 
 First. That the prediction be beyond the power of 
 man in penetrating the future; that it be not a vision 
 of hope; that it be not the result of a mathematical 
 calculation ; that it be not within the limits of mere po- 
 litical sagacity. The inspiration of hope is not proph- 
 ecy, for it makes nothing certain. The calculation of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 209 
 
 an eclipse is not prophecy, for it depends on fixed laws. 
 The suggestions of sagacity are not prophecy, for they 
 are not fixed and certain; they give no dates, no names, 
 no details. 
 
 Second. It must be demonstrated that the prediction 
 was before the event. Every man has a right to re- 
 quire that this shall be put beyond suspicion. 
 
 Third. The prediction must be fairly applicable to 
 the event. It should not refer to one of many things 
 to which it might be adjusted with equal ease, but to 
 one thing, and so definite that it can not be adjusted to 
 another, except as that other may be an unfolding of it. 
 The prediction of the destruction of Babylon must be 
 of Babylon, and so expressed that it shall describe that 
 city in its future ruin, and not Tyre, Nineveh, Petra, Je- 
 rusalem, Rome. 
 
 Fourth. The language should be such that it will be 
 unmistakable. Whether words or symbols are used, 
 they must be such that by fair, not by forced interpret- 
 ation, the prediction is applicable to the event. The 
 enemies of revelation have a right to demand this; its 
 friends are bound to show that it is so. 
 
 But there are some things of equal clearness which 
 are not to be demanded, and which are essential to a 
 just view of the subject, but which are not as likely to 
 be conceded as these would be. It is important that 
 we have a clear understanding with the enemies of rev- 
 ‘elation in regard to them also. 
 
 First. In order to prophecy it is not necessary that 
 there should be an exact and minute specification of 
 names, dates, and circumstances. The reasons of this 
 are obvious: (a) If there were such an exact specifica- 
 tion it would be possible to defeat the prophecy. (0) An 
 event can be designated with sufficient certainty with- 
 
210 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 out such an exact specification of names, dates, and cir- 
 cumstances. (c) A predicted event, that seems obscure 
 before the event occurs, may become clear when the 
 event is accomplished. Such may be the clearness of 
 the event, so entirely may it tally with the prediction, 
 so plain may become the statements in the prophecy 
 that seemed to be obscure, and so perfectly may the 
 facts in the event harmonize apparently contradictory 
 statements in the prophecy, that, while it would not 
 have been easy or possible, perhaps, to have made a 
 statement in detail beforehand of what would be, there 
 can be no doubt of what was intended in the prophecy. 
 Thus, for illustration, in the prophecies respecting the 
 Messiah, there seemed*to be two classes of predictions 
 that were wholly irreconcilable, and that led to wholly 
 different expectations of what he would be. One class 
 described him as a man in humble life; a man of sor- 
 rows; a man rejected, despised, put to death, buried. 
 The other class described him as the descendant of 
 David; as one who would occupy his throne; as a 
 prince and a conqueror; as triumphant; as reigning ; 
 as setting up a perpetual kingdom; as going forth to 
 the conquest of the world; as triumphing over all his 
 foes; as successful and glorious in his work. One class 
 of the prophecies described him as one who had all the 
 susceptibilities of a man, and who was subject to all the 
 infirmities of a man; the other class described him as 
 the “mighty God,” and the “ Father of the everlasting 
 age” (Isa.,ix.,6). The Jews naturally, in carrying out 
 their ideas of national pride and glory, selected the lat- 
 ter view, and anticipated in their Messiah an illustrious 
 prince and conqueror— one who in his reign would 
 surpass even the magnificent reigns of David and Sol- 
 omon. ‘They were never able when he appeared, nor 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 21] 
 
 are they to this day, to blend the two descriptions in 
 one person. The Christian sees no difficulty in the 
 subject, for he finds, he thinks, all these things united 
 in him who, “being in the form of God, thought it not 
 robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no 
 reputation, and was made in the likeness of men; and 
 being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
 and became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
 cross” (Phil., i1., 6-8). 
 
 What is here stated may exist to some extent under 
 any circumstances, and in the plainest descriptions, from 
 the nature of the human mind, and from the necessity of 
 the case. A description of a person that we have not 
 seen, or an event that we have not witnessed, may be 
 very obscure before the person is seen or the event oc- 
 curs, but plain enough, and so plain that the correspond- 
 ence can not be mistaken, when the person is seen or 
 the event occurs. Who ever obtained any correct idea 
 of Niagara Falls by a description? Who, say to the 
 most polished Greek and Roman mind, could have con- 
 veyed by mere description any idea of a printing-press, 
 of a locomotive engine, of the magnetic telegraph ? 
 Who could convey to one born blind an idea of the 
 prismatic colors, or to the deaf an idea of the sounds 
 of the great organ at Harlaem? 
 
 As I suppose all students do, I had formed an idea of 
 Rome from the descriptions which I had read in my 
 early years. I had grown up with the idea until it be- 
 came as definite in my own mind as the lanes, and 
 roads, and fields, and streams of the quiet country-place 
 where I was born. I could have drawn out a map of 
 it, and could have located the Tiber, and the Vatican, 
 and the Forum, and the Coliseum. When, some years 
 ago, I was actually there, I had ¢2vo Romes in my eye 
 
21g LECTURES ON. THE 
 
 —the Rome of my youth and of all my life, and the 
 Rome of the reality, and nothing scarcely could have 
 been more unlike than the two. Yet the Rome of the 
 reality, in fact, corresponded with all the descriptions 
 that I had read; all those accounts were blended and 
 combined in it; and the Rome of my youthful imagina- 
 tion gradually gave way to the reality, so that I can 
 recall it no more. So the anticipations of the Messiah 
 grew up among the Hebrews. A distinct conception 
 of him, apparently as drawn by the prophets, was form- 
 ed in the national mind. When the reality appeared, 
 he was, therefore, not recognized as the Messiah, and 
 was rejected. To the present day that Messiah of the 
 youth of the Hebrew people—the Messiah of the imag- 
 ination—is before the unconverted Hebrew mind. To 
 the converted Jew—to Saul of Tarsus—that imaginary 
 Messiah passed away, and the Messiah of the reality 
 became fixed in the mind, blending all the ancient de- 
 scriptions in harmony. Paul, I think, refers to this illu- 
 sion and this reality when he says of himself, “ Though 
 we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now hence- 
 forth know we him no more” (2 Cor., v., 16). 
 
 Second. In presenting the argument from prophecy, 
 we may lay out of view the fact that many of the proph- 
 ecies are yet difficult and obscure. Undoubtedly that 
 may be so, and it is to be admitted that it is so. Toa 
 certain extent, for the reason already stated, all prophe- 
 cies must be in a measure obscure until they are fulfilled, 
 and, as there may be many which are not yet fulfilled, it 
 is not to be denied that they may be obscure. But this 
 fact does not affect those that are clear—clear either in 
 the terms in which they are expressed, or made ¢lear . 
 by the fact that they are fulfilled. They stand on their 
 own basis, and are to be interpreted as if there were no 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ois 
 
 other prophecies, whether real or obscure, true or false. 
 Moreover, the fact that they are now obscure does not 
 make it certain that they will always be so, or that even 
 they may not, at some future time, have a place among 
 those predictions so clearly fulfilled as to show that 
 they had their origin in God. 
 
 It may be remarked, also, that what is now affirmed 
 respecting prophecy is also true of the facts respecting 
 science, or of knowledge of any kind. Many of the real 
 truths of science are to us, as yet, very obscure, very 
 dim and shadowy. They seem to be enveloped in a 
 mist which we can not penetrate. They are not de- 
 fined, even in their outlines, fully and clearly. There 
 are many doubts, even in the best cultivated minds, in 
 regard to them. The age of the world, for instance, is 
 one such point. No one has been able to determine it 
 by measuring the duration of the various periods which 
 geology reveals as having succeeded each other, in the 
 formation of rocks, and soils, and seas, since the creation, 
 or since the matter of the earth was brought into being. 
 Indeed, no approximation has been made to this, nor 
 has-any one ventured even to conjecture how long this 
 has been.* But the obscurity on this point in no wise 
 affects the clearness and the certainty of the facts which 
 geology has disclosed in regard to the changes of the 
 earth. The evidence of each one of these rests entirely 
 on its own basis, quite independent of the inquiry about 
 the times which have elapsed since those great changes 
 commenced, Time, too, and farther inquiry may throw 
 light on the questions which are still obscure, and they 
 
 * ‘The actual lengths of these ages it is not possible to determine 
 even approximately. All that geology can claim to do is to prove 
 the general proposition that Time ts long.” —Dana’s Text-book of 
 Geology, p. 244. 
 
214 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 may, at some far-distant period in the future, take their 
 place among the clear and acknowledged truths of sci- 
 ence, as the now obscure prophecies may among those 
 that are plain. 
 
 Third. For a similar reason, we may lay out of view 
 the question about the ¢nterpretation of many of the 
 propheciesas forced and fanciful. Undoubtedly they 
 are so, and it is a great abridgment of our task in in- 
 terpreting prophecy that we are not required, in de- 
 fending the divine origin of the predictions of the Bible, 
 to undertake the defense of those interpretations. For 
 the vagaries of the human mind; for the weaknesses of 
 religionists, however amiable; for idiosyneracies among 
 good men; for fanciful theories in regard to interpreta- 
 tion; for the failure of expectations founded on such 
 interpretations, prophecy itself is In no wise responsi- 
 ble, any more than science is for the failure of the ex- 
 periments to secure perpetual motion or to construct a 
 flying machine. The world is quite full of Second Ad- 
 vent literature, much of it already occupying the same 
 place in our libraries which the ingenious plans for se- 
 curing perpetual motion or constructing flying ma- 
 chines do in the Patent Office, but these no more affect 
 the reality of prophecy than those abandoned speci- 
 mens of visionary ingenuity and skill do the steam-boat 
 or the telegraph. 
 
 Fourth. For the purpose of the present argument, 
 also, we may lay out of view the manner in which the 
 sacred writers themselves quote the prophecies and ap- 
 ply the language of the Old Testament to the events re- 
 corded in the New, under the general form of quota- 
 tion, iva mAnopwSh (Matt., 1., 22 5 li.,.15 5 iv., 143 xx; 
 XXv1., 56; xxviL, 35; Mark, xiv., 29; John, xi, 38, e 
 sepe). In saying that these quotations may be laid out 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 215 
 
 of view, it is not admitted that they are on a false prin- 
 ciple, or that they can not be vindicated, but that they 
 do not affect the real question about prophecy. If it 
 should be conceded that their manner of making these 
 quotations could not be vindicated, still the admission 
 ‘would only affect the question of their own inspiration, 
 not the main question whether there are prophecies of 
 whose application there could be no doubt. The sole 
 inquiry in regard to the passages that come under the 
 form of quotation included in the words iva rAnpwS7— 
 “that it might be fulfilled”— would be whether this 
 manner of quotation would be consistent with just 
 views of inspiration. A solution of the difficulties on 
 that point, or a failure to solve the difficulties, would in 
 no way affect the more general inquiry whether there 
 may not be prophecies which are encumbered with no 
 difficulties of this nature. They must stand or fall on 
 their own merit. The question of énspiration may be af- 
 fected by this inquiry, but not the question of prophecy. 
 
 Laying these things, therefore, out of view, as in no 
 way affecting the inquiry before us, I shall now proceed 
 to make a few remarks on the evidence from prophecy 
 of the truth of revelation as it appears in the nineteenth 
 century. Of course the remarks must be few. I can 
 not go in detail into an examination of the numerous 
 predictions in the Bible in regard to the future. 
 
 The Bible, more than any other book, deals with the 
 future. 
 
 (a) Philosophers and historians rarely venture into 
 the region of the future, for it is not in their province. 
 Their field is mainly the past; their range in regard 
 to the future is limited to reflections and inferences 
 from the past as to what the future, supposing that 
 the world is governed by uniform laws, and that the 
 
216 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 same causes will produce the same results, may be. 
 That luxury will corrupt and destroy a nation is one 
 of those general maxims derived from the experience 
 
 of the past, and it may therefore be predicted that — 
 
 where luxury abounds it will produce the same effect 
 hereafter which it has done before. But beyond such 
 general maxims philosophers and historians do not ven- 
 ture to go. Mr. Gibbon deals with the past; Tacitus 
 dealt with the past ; Mr. Hume and Lord Macaulay deal 
 with the past; and, profound as are the reflections of 
 these men, especially those of Tacitus, on human affairs, 
 on-human nature as exhibited by the course of events, 
 and on what may be the destiny of nations or the ad- 
 vances of society: hereafter, yet they never venture to 
 suggest what may be the boundaries of empires in times 
 to come; what new forms of dominion may arise; what 
 remarkable personages may appear and act their part 
 on the great theatre of human affairs ; what cities may 
 be besieged or lands laid waste by war; what new 
 towns may be built, or at what periods of time great 
 and important events may be expected to occur. Men 
 can calculate eclipses, but they do not venture to fore- 
 tell how events will occur that are dependent on the 
 human will, or consequent on new discoveries and in- 
 ventions in the sciences and the arts. The Bible, how- 
 ever, deals as much and as freely with the future as 
 with the past, and the sacred writers do not hesitate any 
 ‘more to describe what will occur than to record what 
 has happened. ‘The nearest approach to such predic- 
 tions as occur in the Scriptures, in the ancient classic 
 writings, is probably found in the “ Pollio” of Virgil 
 (Ecl. iv.), bearing, in some respects, a strong resem- 
 blance to some passages in-Isaiah; but it would be 
 easy to show how far short this comes of prophecy. 
 
 > 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ge Py 
 
 (6) False religions do not deal much with the future. 
 As Mohammed in his public life expressly disclaimed re- 
 liance on miracles as not necessary to the establishment 
 of his religion, so, in the Koran, he has practically dis- 
 claimed reliance on prophecy as equally unnecessary. 
 There are no predictions in the Koran corresponding 
 with those of the Messiah in the Scriptures, or with 
 those pertaining to Babylon, to Petra, to Tyre, to 
 Edom, or to Jerusalem. Mohammed, perhaps, had sa- 
 gacity enough to see that the truth of any such predic- 
 tions would soon come to a practical test, for there is 
 nothing on which men who wish to establish a perma- 
 nent religion, or a permanent fame, will be so slow to 
 venture as on predictions in regard to the future. The 
 Bible, therefore, has laid itself open to detection as no 
 other book has, if it is false, by its pretended disclosures 
 of the future. Lord Bacon, in his will, said, “For my 
 name and memory, I leave them to men’s charitable 
 speeches, and to foreign nations, and to the next ages.” 
 The Bible, in all the reproaches cast upon it, has thus 
 left its vindication to the “next ages”—to remotest pe- 
 riods and generations. 
 
 The nature of the argument I shall state now in few 
 words. There is not time to go into detail, nor is it 
 necessary for my purpose. 
 
 First. The sacred books describe things as they now 
 exist—now, in this nineteenth century. The range of 
 subjects to which this remark is applicable is very 
 large, but the nature of the argument would be the 
 same whether we take the whole range of subjects into 
 the account, or confine our illustrations to a few of them. 
 As the facts are not such that they could or would be 
 called in question, it can not be alleged that any advan- 
 tage would be taken, or any unfairness evinced, if we 
 
 K 
 
218 ; LECTURES ON THE 
 
 confine our attention to a very few of these things. 
 We may take, then, as a specimen—as a sufficient illus- 
 tration—the condition of two celebrated cities in the 
 past, Babylon and Tyre. The remark which I am now 
 making is, that now, in the nineteenth century, the con- 
 dition of those cities is what the prophets said. 7 would 
 be more than two thousand years ago. 
 
 Babylon.—The prophets said that the following would 
 be its condition: ‘“ And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, 
 the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when 
 God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never 
 be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from genera- 
 tion to generation ; neither shall the Arabian pitch his 
 tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold 
 there; but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, and 
 their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls 
 shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And 
 wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate 
 houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces; and her 
 time ‘is near to come, and her days shall not be pro- 
 longed” (Isa., xiii., 19-22). “I will also make it a pos- 
 session for the bittern, and pools of water; and I will 
 sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord 
 of hosts” (Isa., xiv., 23). 
 
 This zs the condition of Babylon now, and has been 
 for centuries. Every part of this statement can be con- 
 firmed, and has been confirmed by travelers in the East, 
 and in regard to the facts there are no varying state- 
 ments. My time will not allow me to go into detail in 
 showing the accuracy of this description; and it is un- 
 necessary, for there are no differences of statements in 
 regard to what Babylon is, and has been for centuries.* 
 
 » 
 
 * For details on this subject, if any are disposed to pursue it farther, 
 I may be permitted to refer to my Notes on Isaiah on these passages, 
 and to Keith on the Prophecies, p. 185-190, 218-235. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 219 
 
 Tyre.—Of Tyre, the prophets said that the following 
 would be its condition: “Thus saith the Lord God, Be- 
 hold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many 
 nations to come against thee, as the sea causeth his 
 waves to come up; and they shall destroy the walls of 
 Tyrus, and break down her towers; and I will scrape 
 her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock: 
 it shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst 
 of the sea; for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God” 
 (Ezek., xxvi., 3-5). “I will make thee like the top ofa 
 rock; thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou 
 shalt be built no more, for I the Lord have spoken it, 
 saith the Lord God” (Ezek., xxvi., 14). “I will make 
 thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more: though thou 
 be sought for, yet thou shalt never be found again, saith 
 the Lord God” (Ezek., xxvi., 21). This zs, and has been 
 the condition of Tyre for many centuries now, as might 
 be shown by any number of witnesses. ‘The vicissi- 
 tudes of time, or rather the barbarism of the Greeks of 
 the lower empire,” says Volney, “have accomplished 
 their prediction. Instead of that ancient commerce,” 
 says he, “so active and so extensive, Tyre, reduced to 
 a miserable village, has no other trade than the expor- 
 tation of a few sacks of corn and raw cotton; nor any 
 merchant but a single Greek factor, who scarcely 
 makes sufficient profit to maintain his family.” “The 
 whole village of Tyre,” he adds, “contains only fifty or 
 sixty poor families, who live obscurely on the produce 
 of their little grounds and a small fishery.”—Travels, 
 
 -p. 212. Bruce describes Tyre as a “rock whereon 
 fishers dry their nets.” Of Tyre in its present con- 
 dition, there is no more difference in the description of 
 travelers than there is in the description of Babylon. 
 The accordance of the facts with the prophetic state- 
 
220 LECTURES ON*THE 
 
 ments could be easily established in the most minute 
 details. 
 
 The remarks now made might be extended, with like 
 accuracy of description, to Nineveh, Edom, Petra, Je- 
 rusalem, to the condition of the Hebrew people, I be- 
 lieve also to the fall of the Roman empire, the estab- 
 lishment of the kingdom of the Messiah, and the rise 
 and character of the Papal power. But the discussion 
 would be too extended, and would not add essential 
 strength to the argument. Let us, therefore, in the 
 consideration of the argument, confine ourselves to the 
 two great cities now mentioned, and to the cities with 
 which they were connected, and which rose from the 
 same causes, and which by the same causes were made 
 permanently desolate, as the prophets said they would 
 be. , 
 
 Second. What was predicted, and what has occurred, 
 in regard to the cities to which I have referred as an 
 illustration of the argument, was, in itself, in a high de- 
 gree improbable. There was no reason why Babylon 
 should become a scene of utter and permanent desola- 
 tion; there was none why Tyre should cease to be an 
 important sea-port, and should become a place on which 
 the poor fisherman should spread his nets; and there 
 was no probability that either would occur. A similar 
 prophecy now, in regard to London or New York, 
 would have as much probability as the prophecies re- 
 specting Babylon and Tyre had when they were utter- 
 ed; and strange and improbable as Macaulay’s descrip- 
 tion of the inhabitant of New Zealand standing on a 
 broken arch of London Bridge, amid a scene of wide 
 desolation, and making a sketch of the ruins of St.. 
 Paul’s, seems to us, yet it is no more strange than the 
 predictions of Isaiah and Ezekiel would have appeared 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 221 
 
 to the men of their times in regard to Babylon and Tyre. 
 Babylon, in its position, its strength, its resources, its 
 trade, its wealth, its relation to the vast empire of 
 which it was the capital, and the other empires of the 
 East with which it was connected, had all the requisites 
 of a great and permanent city; Tyre, in its harbor, its 
 relation to the commerce of Asia, its situation on the 
 Mediterranean, with no rival harbor on the whole of 
 the eastern shores of that great sea, and its position be- 
 tween Asia and Europe, through which the commerce 
 of the Kast must pass, had all the requisites of a per- 
 manent and rich sea-port; nor could it be shown that 
 Liverpool or New York, in relation to the commerce of 
 the world now, are more favorably situated than Tyre 
 was then. The great traffic of the East—of the world 
 —passed through it, and it must have seemed then that 
 that traffic would continue to pass through it forever. 
 
 Third. The causes of the permanent ruin of these 
 cities, and of the other cities in the same group—Petra, 
 Tadmor, Baalbec—were such as could not then be fore- 
 seen. The foretelling of those causes was wholly be- 
 yond the existing state of knowledge at that age of 
 the world—wholly beyond the range of human sagac- 
 ity.* 
 
 The main cause of these great changes, and perhaps 
 the sole cause of these permanent desolations, was the 
 discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, and the conse- 
 quent change which that event made in the commerce 
 of the world. Babylon, and Tyre, and Petra, and Pal- 
 
 * In relation to these causes, which there was not time fully to 
 state in the Lecture, I may be permitted to refer to an article on the 
 ‘¢ Ancient Commerce of Western Asia,” in the Biblical Repository for 
 1840, and reprinted in the volumes entitled “ Miscellaneous Essays 
 and Reviews,” published by Ivison and Phinney, 1855, vol. ii., p. 5-60. 
 
Diy sys LECTURES ON THE 
 
 myra were indeed in ruins before that event occurred, 
 but there was nothing in the nature of the case that 
 prevented their being rebuilt again, until the causes 
 which had made them great had ceased forever. The 
 great and rich commerce of the East had been the prize 
 sought for by all ancient nations, and that commerce 
 had laid the foundation, or had given importance to the . 
 cities and sea-ports which were in the line of its direc- 
 tion, as that commerce subsequently made Alexandria 
 and Venice, in a great measure, what they were. The 
 discovery of the Cape of Good Hope—a new passage to 
 India — gave that commerce a new direction forever, 
 and sealed the truth of the prophecies—forever turned 
 it from Petra, and Palmyra, and Tyre, and Babylon, and 
 Alexandria, and Venice, as the ocean ships from Asia 
 to California, and the Pacific Railroad, may yet turn it 
 away from London and Liverpool. There were no 
 causes when the prophets spoke that tended to make 
 Babylon, and Petra, and Tyre what they are, any more 
 than there were causes which could be foreseen to pro- 
 duce the malaria in the Pontine Marshes, desolating 
 Rome, or than-there will be causes in the future which 
 could now be foreseen which will make Philadelphia or 
 London pools of water and the habitation of owls. 
 Mere political sagacity could never, in Palestine or any 
 where else, have foreseen the discovery of the Cape of 
 Good Hope, or the effects of the use of the magnetic 
 needle, or the changes produced by the railroad and 
 the steam vessel; nor could political sagacity have pre- 
 dicted the flowing in of the sand that permanently 
 blocked up the harbor of Tyre. 
 
 Fourth. The prophetic statements to which I have 
 referred were written before the events occurred. In 
 respect to some prophecies, as, for example, the predic- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Co 
 
 tion of the beginning and the close of the Babylonish 
 captivity, in which doth the prophecy and the event are 
 now far distant in the past, it may require no small 
 amount of learning and argument to demonstrate that 
 the prophecy was written before the event; in respect 
 to the events now under consideration, no such study 
 _can be necessary, for it can not be made a matter of 
 doubt. I believe, indeed, that it can be fully shown by 
 the sternest literary criticism that the prophecies re- 
 specting Babylon and Tyre were written before the de- 
 cline and fall of those great cities, and when they were, 
 in fact, in the meridian height of their splendor; but, 
 however that may be, there can be no doubt that they 
 were written before the present time, and, therefore, an- 
 terior to their fulfillment as the fulfillment is now—the 
 fulfilment of absolute and perpetual desolation. If it 
 could have been foretold by natural sagacity, or by rea- 
 soning on the ordinary course of events, as probable or 
 even certain, that they would be overthrown by war, 
 or by time, or by changes in human affairs, yet how, by 
 such sagacity, could it have been predicted that they 
 would be perpetually and permanently desolate? How 
 could the prominent cause of that perpetual desolation 
 —the changing of the commerce of the world by a new 
 route to the Indies, of which they at that time never 
 dreamed—have been foreseen? And how, in any cir- 
 cumstances, could their perpetual desolation have been 
 predicted? Do cities never rise again after they have 
 been destroyed? Are they never rebuilt after they have 
 been razed to their foundations by war? Jerusalem— 
 how often was it rebuilt after it had been laid in ruins! 
 Rome—how often has that been laid waste by fire; by 
 invading armies; by the Goths and Vandals; by ma- 
 laria; and yet how often it has been rebuilt again! Lon- 
 
224 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 don—how often has the fire passed over it, and yet it 
 has risen to augmented wealth and grandeur! Lisbon, 
 destroyed by an earthquake—how soon did it rise 
 again! Why, then, are Babylon, and Tyre, and Petra, 
 and Tadmor, doomed to perpetual desolation? And 
 how could it be known that they would be? But there 
 they are, now, in this nineteenth century, precisely as 
 the prophets said they would be—piles of ruins; utter 
 desolations; the habitation of dragons, and satyrs, and 
 owls. . 
 
 Fifth. It remains, then, in summing up what I have 
 saidsto observe that these things are beyond the range 
 of the unaided powers of man. They are not a mere 
 ouess, or a vague conjecture of what might be, like Ma- 
 caulay’s remark about the New Zealander; they are 
 positive affirmations of what would,be. They can not 
 come under the province of hope, for their enemies could 
 have seen no ground of hope that they would be thus 
 permanently desolate. They are not the result of math- 
 ematical calculation, as the movements of the heavenly 
 bodies are, for ruined cities come under no sveh laws. 
 The predictions are not the result of political sagacity. 
 In particularity; in definiteness; in minuteness; in de- 
 tail, they are wholly unlike the predictions of Burke 
 and Canning, for even Burke, wonderful as his sagacity 
 was, never ventured on any predictions that would cor- 
 respond in detail with the events following the French 
 Revolution and the Regicide Peace. They are, there- 
 fore, the result of PRopHECY—the effect of a supernatu- 
 ral endowment of man, on a line similar to miracles; and 
 a confirmation now, like miracles, of the divine origin 
 of the book in which they are found. 
 
 The following, then, is the argument in this nine- 
 teenth century: 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. yas 
 
 (a) There are the books containing these prophecies. 
 They have come down to us from the far-distant past 
 —the most venerable books in the possession of man- 
 kind. Those books do not pass away as their authors 
 did. They live. They have lived for more than two 
 thousand years. They will live on to all coming time. 
 They do not change. Not a word is altered; not a let- 
 ter is lost. They may be examined with the utmost 
 patience and leisure of criticism, and the world is in- 
 vited to the examination. 
 
 (6) There are the facts. The East is full of them. 
 They, too, do not now change. Babylon and Tyre are 
 what they have been for more than a thousand years, 
 and they will remain what they are for more than a 
 thousand years to come, except that the corroding 
 tooth of time will slowly remove the proofs, as now 
 found in their remains, that they once existed at all. 
 They, too, may be examined as leisurely as the books. 
 Travelers tell us what they are, and they do not vary 
 in their statements. Any man, if he has any doubt on 
 the subject, may go and examine those ruins. “I 
 would,” said a countryman of our own, when speaking 
 of the ruins of a city in the East, “I would that the 
 _ skeptic could stand, as I did, among the ruins of this 
 city, and there open the sacred book, and read the 
 words of the inspired penman, written when this deso- 
 late place was one of the greatest cities in the world. 
 I see the scoff arrested, his cheek pale, his lip quivering, 
 and his heart quaking with fear, as the ancient city cries 
 out to him, in a voice loud and powerful as one risen 
 from the dead; though he would not believe Moses and 
 the prophets, he believes the handwriting of God him- 
 self in the desolation and eternal ruin around him.’* 
 
 * Stephens, Incidents of Travel, etc., vol. ii., p. 76. 
 K 2 
 
226 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 
 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES WITH REFERENCE TO 
 THE OBJECTIONS MADE IN THE NINETEENTH CEN- 
 TURY. 
 
 TuHE subject of this Lecture will be the inspiration of 
 the Bible as an argument for the divine origin of Chris- 
 tianity, keeping before us, in the discussion, the main 
 thought which lies at the foundation of these Lectures 
 —the argument as it exists in the nineteenth century. 
 The point of the inquiry is not what the argument for 
 the inspiration of the Bible, and the consequent proofs 
 of the divine origin of the system, would have been 
 when the canon of the Bible was complete, and it was 
 first submitted to the world, but what it is now, after 
 the volume has been before the world for eighteen 
 hundred years. It has been fairly tried. It may be pre- 
 sumed that all the objections that are ever to be made 
 to its inspiration have been already made. It may be 
 assumed that its teachings are understood, and that we 
 now understand what its influence will be at any time, 
 in any land, or in relation to any class of men, barbar- 
 ous or civilized, or in its bearing on the morals, the 
 manners, and the laws of men. It may be assumed, 
 perhaps, that science will have nothing more formida- 
 ble to oppose to its claims to inspiration than it has 
 already alleged, and that no discoveries will be made — 
 in the ruins of ancient cities and towns, or in the struc- — 
 ture of the earth itself, that will add any new facts to 
 strengthen the argument against its divine origin. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 2277 
 
 What, then, is the evidence, in the age in which we 
 live, that this book was inspired ? 
 
 It would not be practicable in a single Lecture, on 
 such a subject, to enter into details, and it is not my 
 purpose to attempt it. This one subject itself might 
 extend beyond the entire limit of this course of Lec- 
 tures, and still be unexhausted ; for the field is ample ; 
 the difficulties are great; there are important ques- 
 tions which are not yet settled; and perhaps, as com- 
 pared with other subjects pertaining to the Bible, there 
 is no more inviting field on which a student of the sa- 
 cred Scriptures, who would wish to prepare something 
 that might be the great work of his life, could more 
 properly employ his talents than in endeavoring to 
 determine the yet unsettled questions about the in- 
 spiration of the Bible. Into the questions, therefore, 
 about the modes of inspiration; whether it extends 
 to the words as well as to the matter; how far the 
 sacred writers availed themselves of their own knowl- 
 edge and observation, and the knowledge and histor- 
 ical records in existence when they wrote; how far, 
 as inspired men, they are responsible for statements 
 on other subjects than those pertaining to the im- 
 mediate purpose of inspiration — the ordinary facts 
 of history, or the statements of science ; how far they 
 were permitted to employ their own powers, and how 
 this is consistent wth their being inspired how the 
 apparent discrepancies and contradictions in the book 
 can be reconciled with the idea of inspiration — into 
 these and kindred questions I do not propose largely 
 to enter. I may be permitted, also, to say, that on 
 some of these points there are difficulties. which have 
 not yet been met, and which perhaps none of us are 
 prepared to meet. 
 
bo 
 ies 
 
 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 I shall, therefore, limit my remarks to considerations 
 of a very general nature, designed to show that the 
 Bible can not have been the work of the unaided hu- 
 man powers, but that there are things pertaining to it 
 which show that it must have come from God, or that 
 it was inspired. In a parallel case, we might show that 
 the worlds bear marks of having been made by God, 
 and that any other theory would be incapable of de- 
 fense, though there may be a thousand difficulties in 
 our minds in respect to that creation, and a thousand 
 things which we are not competent to reconcile and 
 explain. 
 
 There are certain characteristics of mind which, how- 
 ever unnatural it may seem at first sight to place them 
 together, appear to lie in the same dine, or to have a re- 
 lation to each other which has not yet been explained ; 
 where one closely borders on another; where one may 
 be mistaken for another; and where, in describing the 
 operations of the mind, there may be danger of ascrib- 
 ing that to one which properly belongs to another. I 
 mention them in the following order: Genius; Inspira- 
 tion; Insanity. 
 
 Imention them in this connection and this order, not 
 because this order is always found, or because the one 
 naturally develops itself into the other, or because the 
 one is to be explained on the same principles as the 
 other, but because there is a certain resemblance in 
 them which would not be likely to be found in other 
 characteristics of the human mind as bearing on the 
 production of a work of art, or in relation to the devel- 
 opments of the highest forms of thought. The Bible 
 is the creation of one of these. The word inspiration. 
 is often applied to the works of genius ; among the 
 Greeks, and the ancients generally, the idea of inspira- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 229 
 
 tion, as at the oracle at Delphi, was closely connected 
 with the ravings of insanity. 
 
 (1.) Gentus.—This means “ the peculiar structure of 
 mind which is given by nature to an individual, or that 
 disposition or bent of mind which is peculiar to every 
 man, and which qualifies him for a particular employ- 
 ment; a particular natural talent or aptitude for a par- 
 ticular study or course of life—as a genius for history, 
 poetry, or painting.”—. Webster. Hence it comes to be 
 applied to superiority of mind, or to uncommon powers 
 of intellect, particularly the power of invention. 
 
 This often seems to rise into inspiration, and, at any 
 rate, lies along on the borders of inspiration, using that 
 word now in the largest sense. Our life, if we would 
 mark it in any case, is made up much of suggestions ab 
 extra—from without. Those suggestions are number- 
 less, and as varied as they are numberless; they are 
 flitting and transitory; they come from some unseen 
 quarter, and are apparently connected with each other 
 by no laws of association, and by no laws that we can 
 trace with what we have done or thought before. A 
 few of them we retain at our pleasure; the mass we 
 dismiss at once, as we do dreams. Genius consists, per- 
 haps, not so much in the numbers or the nature of those 
 suggestions as in the power or the disposition to retain 
 them and to make a selection from them; to keep and 
 combine those. that may be -the origin of great inven- 
 tions, or that may be developed into some new discoy- 
 ery in science—that may lay the foundation of a great 
 tragedy or a great epic. A thousand persons might 
 have seen the spasmodic action produced in the mus- 
 cles of the leg of a frog when in contact with a com- 
 position of zinc and acid, and never have thought of 
 it again; but to Galvani it suggested an idea worth 
 
230 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 pursuing. Thousands of persons had seen an apple fall 
 from a tree, and had thought no more of it; to Newton, 
 according to the current tradition, it suggested an in- 
 quiry into the cause of its falling, and led to the discov- 
 ery of the great laws by which the planets are held in 
 their places and by which the worlds revolve. Thou- 
 sands of persons had seen the operation of steam on a 
 small scale—in lifting the lid of a tea-kettle—and had 
 dismissed it without thought; to such a mind as that 
 of Watt it suggested the idea of power, of motion, and 
 is now changing the industry, the commerce, the civil- 
 ization, and the religion of the world. 
 
 Yet who can tell whence these suggestions come into 
 our minds? Who is their author? By what laws do 
 they come, and by. what laws do they go? And by 
 what principles did Homer, and Shakspeare, and New- 
 ton retain them, and mould them till their development 
 had given undying lustre to their memory ? 
 
 There are those who suppose that the inspiration of 
 the Bible is no more than this, and that it is to be ex- 
 plained on the same principle; not as derived from sug- 
 gestions by the Spirit of God, but as suggestions of the 
 mind itself, the suggestions of genius. Such persons— 
 and they are many now—like Theodore Parker, and 
 like Renan, do not deny the “ énspiration” of the Bible, 
 but it 1s Inspiration such as there was in Burns or in 
 Bacon; in Homer or in Milton; in Dante or in Michael 
 Angelo. Shakspeare and Isaiah, Kant and Paul, differ 
 only in degree. 
 
 How closely the idea of genius and inspiration lie on 
 the same line may be seen from .the meaning which the 
 word genius has acquired. The ancients, in their use 
 of the word, did not attribute genius to a man’s own 
 mind. It was the good or evil spirit, or demon, which 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. Dawe 
 
 was supposed to preside over his destiny in life; to di 
 rect his birth and actions; to be his guard and guide; 
 to suggest thoughts to him; to impart to him wisdom. 
 Socrates always referred what he had of wisdom that 
 might be superior to that of other men, not to himself, 
 but to his “ genius”—the demon that pertained to him, 
 that attended on him, that inspired him. The genius 
 loci of the ancients was the presiding spirit of a place, 
 the tutelary divinity, hence denoting the pervading 
 spirit of an institution, a city, a society of men. The 
 question before us is whether this will explain all that 
 there was in Isaiah and John. 
 
 (2.) Inspiration in the proper sense ofthe term. Ad- 
 mitting now that there is such a thing, the present ob- 
 ject is to distinguish it from genius—how it resembles 
 it, and how it differs from it. 
 
 (a) As we haye seen, it resembles it. It is suggestive. 
 It is ab extra. It is from some unseen quarter. It 
 comes into the mind by no laws of association with the 
 past, often apparently by no laws of association with 
 the different parts of the suggestion, any more than the 
 suggestions of genius have, or than dreams have. It 
 contains great thoughts—what Lord Bacon calls “the 
 seeds of things”—to be developed either by the study 
 of the prophet himself, who is inspired, studying his 
 own predictions as if they were those of another man, 
 or, in after times, by events that shall occur, by higher 
 revelations, or by the studies of uninspired men. Thus, 
 of the prophets, one himself inspired has said, “ Of 
 which salvation the prophets have inquired and search- 
 ed diligently, searching what, or what manner of time 
 the spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when 
 it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the 
 glory that should follow” (1 Peter, i, 11,12). They 
 
23y LECTURES ON THE 
 
 gave themselves to the careful and profound study of 
 their own prophecies, of the meaning of the words 
 which had been suggested to them by the Spirit of 
 God. | 
 
 - (6) Yet inspiration differs from genius. It is in ad- 
 vance of genius; it is beyond what lies in the range of 
 genius. We suppose that no development of genius, 
 no mere enlargement of any man’s natural powers, how- 
 ever richly endowed, nothing which comes under the 
 name of genius, would come up to what is implied in 
 inspiration. However we may account for the “sug- 
 gestions” which come into our minds, as I have said, ad 
 extra, and especially the “ suggestions” which come into 
 the minds of men of genius, and which constitute the 
 distinction between them and other men—suggestions 
 on which the progress of the world in science and in 
 art so: much depends—or whether they can be account- 
 ed for or not, yet we suppose that the matter of znspira- 
 tion — the “ suggestions” to the mind of the prophet — 
 can be definitely explained. They are not the sugges- 
 tions of genius, but of the Spirit of God, breathing 
 truths into the soul which would never occur to a hu- 
 man mind, however exalted, and securing, by a direct 
 and special agency on the soul, the perfect accuracy of 
 such suggestions. They are as if the Spirit of God 
 spoke to men. There is a limit to genius. There is a 
 point beyond which it does not go. It never comes up 
 to inspiration, as mere human power, however great and 
 wonderful, neve? comes up to a miracle. There is a 
 point where that power stops short of a miracle, and 
 that is within the power necessary to raise the dead ; 
 there is a point where genius stops short, and that is 
 within the limit of inspiration. And yet it is a fair 
 question, Why may not the genius which accomplished 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 235 
 
 what Shakspeare accomplished embrace what Isaiah 
 did.as well as what Shakspeare did ? 
 
 (3.) It may have seemed strange, perhaps, that Ihave 
 suggested the word insanity as in any way connected 
 with inspiration ; as having any resemblance to that or 
 to genius, or as lying in any respect in the same line; 
 as if genius and insanity were in any way connected ; as 
 if men of genius were likely to be insane, as if all the in- 
 sane were remarkable for genius; or as if the prophets 
 uttered their predictions under the ravings of insanity. 
 
 It would take longer than the time will now admit 
 of, without exhausting the whole time allotted to this 
 Lecture, fully to explain and justify even the introduc- 
 tion of such a thought to your minds, or to show how 
 they have been in any way connected or associated in 
 the minds of men. 
 
 Perhaps even now the highest and best delineations 
 of insanity have been drawn, not by Pritchard and oth- 
 ers who have particularly studied and observed it, but 
 by one who may almost never have seen an insane per- 
 son, and who had not himself studied the subject, but 
 by a man endowed, undoubtedly, with the highest gen- 
 ius that the world has known—as drawn in the charac- 
 ter of Lear, Hamlet, Jaques, and in the tender sympa- 
 thy, the knowledge of the disease, and of the proper 
 mode of treatment of the disease expressed in the char- . 
 acters of Ophelia and Cordelia.* 
 
 The Savior himself was regarded by his kindred as 
 insane: “And when his friends heard of it, they went 
 out to lay hold on him, for they said, He is beside him- 
 self” —e&éorn (Mark, iii., 21). “Many of them said, He 
 hath a devil, and is mad”—paiverac (John, x., 20). 
 
 * See ‘‘ Shakspeare’s Delineations of Insanity, Imbecility, and Sui- 
 cide,” by A. O. Kellogg, M.D., p. 1-114. 
 
234 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Paul was regarded as insane. “ Festus said, with a 
 loud voice, Paul, thou art beside thyself—paiyn—much 
 learning doth make thee mad ;” more literally, “ much 
 learning has turned thee to insanity”—eic paviay rept- 
 roéwer (Acts, xxvi., 24). “ Whether,” says Paul, “ we be 
 beside ourselves” —éiéornuev—as We may seem to many 
 to be, to be insane —“ it is to God”—in the cause of 
 God; that is, what we say as inspired men may seem 
 to men to be the mere ravings of insanity (2 Cor., 
 Vi,43). 
 
 It is well known to all that among the heathen the 
 ideas of inspiration and insanity were closely connected. 
 The opinion which was held by them on the subject is 
 beautifully stated by Plato: “ While the mind sheds its 
 light around us, pouring into our souls a meridian splen- 
 dor, we, being in possession of ourselves, are not under 
 a supernatural influence ; but after the sun goes down, 
 as might be expected, an ecstasy, a divine influence, and 
 a frenzy falls upon us; for when the divine light shines, 
 the human goes down; but when the former goes down, 
 the latter rises and comes forth. This,” says he, “is 
 what ordinarily happens in prophecy. Our own mind 
 retires on the advent of the divine spirit, but after the 
 latter has departed the former again returns” (quoted 
 in Bib. Repos., vol. i.,p. 163). Here Plato calls it “an 
 ecstasy,” “a frenzy,” bordering close, at least, on in- 
 sanity. 
 
 In the common ideas respecting the Pythian oracle, 
 the conception of insanity, or raving madness, becomes 
 more distinct. ‘Thus Lucan says: “She madly raves 
 through the cavern, impelled by another’s mind, with 
 the fillets of the god and the garland of Phebus shaken 
 from her erected hair; she whirls around the void 
 space of the temple, turning her face in every direc- 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 235 
 
 tion; she scatters the tripods which come in her way, 
 and is agitated with violent commotion, because she is 
 under thy angry influence, O Apollo.”* 
 Virgil has given a similar description of a demonia- 
 cal possession of this kind: 
 ‘*T feel the god, the rushing god! she cries— 
 
 While thus she spoke enlarged her features grew ; 
 
 Her color changed, her locks disheveled flew. 
 
 The heavenly tumult reigns in every part, 
 
 Pants in her breast, and swells her rising heart. 
 
 Still spreading to the sight the priestess glowed, 
 
 And heaved impatient of the incumbent god ; 
 
 Then to her inmost soul by Phebus fired, 
 
 In more than human sounds she spoke inspired.’’f 
 
 It has been supposed by some that the true prophets 
 were under an influence of this kind; that they were 
 divested of intelligent consciousness, so that they were 
 ignorant of what they uttered, and that the Spirit of 
 Inspiration made use of them only as organs, or as un- 
 conscious agents to utter his truth. It is not my pur- 
 pose to go into this inquiry; but I suppose, in common 
 with the great mass of those who believe in the Bible, 
 that, though they did not comprehend the jfwd/ meaning 
 of what they uttered (1 Peter, i., 10-12), yet that they 
 
 2 Bacchatur demens aliena per antrum 
 Colla ferens, vittasque Dei, Phoebeaque serta 
 Ercatis discussa comis, per inania templi 
 Ancipiti cervice rotat, Spargitque vaganti 
 Obstantes tripodes, magnoque exxstuat igne 
 Iratum te, Phoebe, ferens.—Pharsalia, v 
 
 Ait: Deus, ecce, Deus! cui talia fanti— 
 
 Ante fores, subitd non vultus, non color unus, 
 
 Nec compte mansere come; sed pectus anhelum, 
 Et rabie fera corda tument ; majorque videri 
 
 Nec mortale sonans; afilata est numine quando 
 Jam propriore Dei.—/En., vi., 46 seq. 
 
236 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 had an intelligent understanding of what they saw or 
 spoke ; that the prophet had control over his own mind 
 (1 Cor., xiv., 82); that he could speak or not, as he 
 pleased ; and that in his inspired utterances he acted, as 
 at other times, as a conscious, voluntary, and intelligent 
 agent. The true idea, probably, has been expressed by 
 Lowth: “ Inspiration may be regarded, not as suppress- 
 ing or extinguishing for a time the faculties of the hu- 
 man mind, but of purifying, and strengthening, and ele- 
 vating them above what they would otherwise reach.” 
 The reference which I have made to insanity is not at 
 all because it is believed that that was the condition of 
 the minds of the prophets, but as illustrating the fact 
 that it has been supposed that these states of mind lie 
 much in the same direction, or have points of resem- 
 blance not unworthy to be noticed. _ The bearing of the 
 remarks on the subject before us is that the Bible, as 
 a composition, is to be traced as a whole, and in all its 
 parts, to one of these three things. The question be- 
 tween the friends of the Bible and other men is to 
 which of these it is to be attributed. 
 
 It will be admitted by all that the Bible is not a: 
 work of ordinary talent—of mediocre human powers. 
 ‘If it is a production of mere genius, it is genius of the 
 highest order. Every thing about it shows this: its 
 hold on mankind; its power to survive attacks; its per- 
 petuated existence; its undiminished influence in the ad- 
 vances of civilization and the arts, and in the changes 
 of human opinion; its poetry; its eloquence; its unity 
 of purpose; its power of creating interest in the minds 
 of all classes of men—the most humble as well as the 
 most exalted, and the most exalted as well as the most 
 humble; the poor man, the rich man; the slave and 
 slave’s master; the man of science, the man of refined 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. - 237 
 
 taste, and the newly-converted savage; the delicate 
 female and the hardy warrior. It is a book that can 
 not be destroyed; a book that does not become old, 
 and that is not hidden away in the lumber of old li- 
 braries. It keeps its place among living men in ages 
 when new books abound; it has its place, in regard to 
 a living power, not with Strabo, and Galen, and Mela, 
 and Abelard, and Duns Scotus, but with Milton, and 
 Shakspeare, and Macaulay, and Burke—books that are 
 “thumbed” and read; it is a book of influence, and has 
 more influence on mankind now than Homer, and Plato, 
 and the Koran, and Shakspeare—than Kant, and Locke, 
 and Bacon altogether. Js it a work of mere genius? 
 
 I said that there are great questions about inspiration 
 which are yet unsettled. IJrepeat, on account of its im- 
 portance, and with the hope of stirring up some young 
 man of this Seminary to the task, the remark that I 
 have already made, that, in my judgment, there is no 
 one department of Christian literature to which a 
 young man could better devote himself, with the hope 
 of producing something which the “world would not 
 willingly let die,” than the solution of those questions. 
 They are beyond my range now—beyond my learning, 
 my ability, and I shall not attempt to enter on them. 
 What is inspiration at all? What is plenary inspira- 
 tion? Is it suggestion, or superintendence, or control, 
 or all combined? Jn inspiration, how far were the facul- 
 ties of the men themselves employed? Were they kept 
 from error on all subjects? In what sense was what 
 they wrote on common matters inspired? To what 
 extent in the Book is the Spirit of God “responsible” 
 for the statements made? And how can the dates, and 
 the genealogies, and the apparent inconsistencies and 
 contradictions be reconciled with the proper idea of 
 
238 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 inspiration ? These are questions in many of their bear- 
 ings yet to be solved, and happy will be the man who 
 shall be raised up to solve them. 
 
 Perhaps, at this stage of the argument, it might be 
 said that the question whether the Bible és an inspired 
 book can not be settled till these questions are determ- 
 ined, for they enter into the very essence of the ques- 
 tion. It may seem to be so, and it might be difficult 
 to show that it is not so. And yet it is not necessarily 
 so. A thousand questions may be asked on any subject 
 without affecting the main question. There may be 
 questions asked about the Principia of Newton, and the 
 correctness of his theories about light and colors, and 
 “fits of easy transmission,” and radiations of heat, which 
 do not affect the question about the work as the work of 
 a man in intellect at the very head of the race; there 
 are many questions about the Iliad, yet unsettled, which 
 do not affect the question whether the whole work is 
 the production of one man; whether such a man as 
 Homer ever lived; and whether the poem is made up 
 of independent “ rhapsodies” by different authors. The 
 work is a whole by itself, and is a work of transcendent 
 genius, however these questions may be settled. 
 
 May we not take some such view of the Bible, and 
 find in that the evidence that it is tmspired without 
 being able as yet to solve all difficulties, as we find in 
 other books, in a similar manner, the evidences of 
 genius ? 
 
 In regard to the argument now to be submitted to 
 you, I would be willing to concede that no single one 
 of the points which I shall suggest would of itself con- 
 stitute a proof of such inspiration. The impression 
 which I would hope to make would be derived from 
 all of them combined. The point which I would desire 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 239 
 
 to leave for solution when I am through with the argu- 
 ment would be, Whether these things could exist if the 
 Bible were not an inspired book? I shall ask you. to 
 remember that that which may not seem to be strong 
 in itself may be strong in its position. The braces 
 which help to sustain a lofty pile of architecture in a 
 cathedral, or the arch of a bridge, may be feeble in 
 themselves, yet these, combined and interlaced among 
 each other, may give strength that shall hold the lofty 
 structure or the massive bridge against the winds and 
 the currents forever. 
 
 I. The first remark which I make.is, that this claim, 
 whatever it is, relates to a class of men, extending 
 through a long series of years, constituting a wnity in 
 their productions, and making their productions prop- 
 erly one book. Whatever may be said of the produc- 
 tions of wninspired genius, this can not be said of them, 
 and this claim could not be set up for them. There is 
 no sense in which the Iliad, and the Paradise Lost, and 
 the histories of Herodotus and Gibbon, and the orations 
 of Demosthenes and Burke, constitute one book. 
 
 The Bible is one book ; not accidentally, or by being 
 bound together like a pile of old pamphlets which the 
 lover of pamphlets accumulates and binds up in one 
 ‘volume, but by an organic unity ; a unity of spirit, de- 
 sign, harmony, purpose; a unity in the sense of being 
 separate from all other books; a unity as distinct as if 
 it were the production of one man; a unity as complete 
 as the Iliad or the Paradise Lost—having a plan; hav- 
 ing a beginning, a middle, and an end 
 middle, and an end more complete, extending through 
 more years, and embracing a greater variety of charac- 
 ters and events than any other volume in the world— 
 its beginning the beginning of creation; its middle the 
 
 
 
 
 
 a beginning, a 
 
240 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Incarnation and the Atonement; its end the consumma- 
 tion of the world’s affairs. 
 
 The volume is made up, indeed, of a large number of 
 pamphlets, written by different men, in different lan- 
 guages, and at different periods. ‘The writers were of 
 very different rank and character, from the magnificent 
 Oriental prince to the shepherd-boy and the fisherman 
 -——_from the man trained in the best schools of the age, 
 like Paul, to the man who could say of himself, “I was 
 no prophet, neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was 
 an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit; and the 
 Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said 
 unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel” (Amos, 
 vil., 14,15). Some of them, indeed, had all the learning 
 of their own country, and not a little of that in foreign 
 lands, and some had none; some had traveled, but most 
 of them had not; some had conversed with sages of 
 other countries, but most of them had never seen a 
 philosopher or a sage. 
 
 What they wrote constituted substantially all the lit- 
 erature of the nation—its poetry; its learning; its his- 
 tory; its eloquence; its laws. At the time of the com- 
 pletion of the volume it was all that they had. If there 
 had been other books in existence, as the books of “ Na- 
 than the Prophet,” and the “ Prophecy of Ahijah the’ 
 Shilonite,” and “the Visions of Iddo the Seer” (2 Chron., 
 ix., 29), and “ Shemaiah the Prophet” (2 Chron., xii., 15), 
 _they had been absorbed into the volume, or had been 
 allowed to “ drop out,” as not pertaining to the design 
 of the one book that was to constitute the literature of 
 the nation. If, simultaneously with this, or in the in- 
 terval when one part of the volume—the Old Testa- 
 ment—was completed, and the other part—the New— 
 was commenced, there was any thing that was, from 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 241 
 
 any cause, deemed worthy of preservation, it was care- 
 fully separated from the sacred books in the “ Apocry- 
 pha ;” if contemporaneously with the New Testament, 
 or subsequently, any other literature existed, as the 
 writings of Philo and Josephus, or the Talmud, this also 
 was carefully separated from, and never confounded 
 with, the one volume that constituted the peculiar lit- 
 erature of the nation. 
 
 There is, there has been no other’ nation where such 
 an organic literature has sprung up, the work of many 
 authors, extending through many years, and yet con- 
 stituting one volume. The religion of China is in a 
 book written by one man—Confucius; the Koran is 
 the production of one man; for any thing that appears, 
 the Zendavesta had a similar origin. The books of In- 
 dia, indeed—the Vedas and the Shasters—have, in this 
 respect, some resemblance to the Bible, but, so far as 
 appears, they were the productions of a few authors, 
 and were composed in 4 brief period. 
 
 You can not bind up the literature of any other peo- 
 ple, making one organic volume, as the Bible is bound 
 up. You can not thus bind up Grecian literature in 
 one volume. You have Homer, and Hesiod, and Herod- 
 otus, and Thucydides, and Aristotle, and Plato, and 
 Sophocles, and Aischylus, but they would not, and could 
 not make one volume, having a beginning, a middle, 
 and an end. There is no reason why it should begin 
 thus; why it should advance thus; and there is no. 
 catastrophe at its close. It is not one book. They are 
 many books. There is no unity. They are not the 
 production of one class of men, except as the Greeks 
 in general were distinguished from the rest of mankind. 
 
 In this view, too, the length of time is to be noticed 
 during which the composition was going on. The Bi- 
 
242 . LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ble is not the production of one age, so that it could be 
 considered, as certain groups of writings may be, as the 
 development of that age; it is the production of many 
 ages, and the composition was quietly going on at the 
 same time in which the most important changes and 
 revolutions were occurring in the earth. During the 
 time of its composition kingdoms rose and fell; great 
 conquerors founded empires, acquired immortality, and 
 they and their kingdoms passed away; new discoveries 
 were made in science and in art; vast revolutions oc- — 
 curred in human affairs. Unaffected by these changes, 
 the composition of the Bible was quietly going on, and 
 the men engaged in the work calmly performed their 
 task, as a man would in a cave, sheltered by rocks, 
 while storms and tempests howled around him. Fora 
 period of sixteen hundred years from the composition 
 of the first book—the book of Job—to the book of Rey- 
 elation, that work was calmly advancing—the writers 
 now appearing in groups, and the work now interrupt- 
 ed by intervals of hundreds of years, till the last dec- 
 laration was uttered, “Surely I come quickly; amen. 
 Even so, come, Lord Jesus ;” winding up the volume and 
 the work. The idea of unity is one that runs through 
 all that period. The plan is slowly developed. The 
 plan is finally consummated by one—John in Patmos— 
 as unlike as can well be conceived in language, in at- 
 tainments, in style, and manner, the man who at least 
 sixteen hundred years before put pen to the whole work 
 in the language, “There was a man in the land of Uz 
 whose name was Job;” or, if Genesis was the first book 
 written, as it is the first in the Bible now, in the lan- 
 guage, “In the beginning God created the heaven and 
 the earth.” Meantime they never copied from one an- 
 other. They never seem to have been conscious that 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. he Fe 
 
 there was a plan slowly developing itself! They never 
 mutilated or shaped facts so as to fit in to such a plan; 
 they never modified the statement of events so that they 
 would seem to be a fulfillment of that plan. Moses, and 
 David, and Isaiah, and Paul, and John are as independ- 
 ent of each other as Hesiod, and Homer, and Plato. 
 The sacred writers were not a corporation, a company, 
 a society, to write wp a certam system, nor were there 
 revisers of their writings so to shape and alter them as 
 to secure unanimity and unity. The “ Dunciad” was 
 written by concert; the “Spectator” was written by 
 concert ; Pope’s Homer was translated by different au- 
 thors under his direction, and united by him in one; the 
 German critics sometimes tell us that the Iliad itself 
 was not written by one Homer, but by many; the 
 _ dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher are always in one 
 volume—“ Beaumont and Fletcher”—apparently joint 
 productions; but in the composition of the Bible each 
 man pursued his own plan, for Moses, and Isaiah, and 
 Paul were perfectly independent authors. 
 
 This is the more remarkable, because a great change 
 occurred in passing from the Old Testament to the New. 
 The old system, with all the peculiar laws and institu- 
 tions pertaining to it, was to give way, and a new sys- 
 tem to be introduced—Christianity Zéving to be super- 
 induced upon Judaism dying. The difficulty was how, 
 in a system so unlike, and where one was to expire and 
 the other to rise into life, the one could be made to ap- 
 pear to run into the other. Is Christianity a develop- 
 ment of Judaism? Would men under their own guid- 
 ance, and without some higher influence, have developed 
 the old system—the Jewish system—the system of the 
 prophets—into Christianity ? Notatall. It would have 
 been, under such a guidance, Judaism still; Judaism 
 
 
 
244 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 refined and expanded, Judaism adapted to the whole 
 world, but Judaism still. And yet the New Testament 
 is a development—a filling up—a completion of the sys- 
 tem of the Old, and the entire Book—the Bible—is one. 
 It is susceptible of easy proof that one part is the com- 
 pletion or complement of the other, as the two parts of 
 a tally, or as “complementary” colors; not as the Jews 
 would have done it, but as it was intended it should be. 
 There is a scheme commenced. There is an anticipa- 
 tion. There is a progress. There is a completion in 
 the Messiah. There is the unfolding of a plan running 
 in its statements through many centuries; one writer 
 in one age stating one thing, and another in another, 
 as if in one age one artist should have fashioned an arm, 
 and another a leg; one a hand, and another a foot; one 
 the nose, another the lips, another the chin; one the 
 form and size of the head, and another the body; and 
 all at last should have been put together in the form of 
 Minerva or Apollo. 
 
 The completion of the plan in the New Testament is 
 different from what a Jew would have made, but it és 
 a completion. He would have made the Messiah of the 
 New Testament a prince, a conqueror, a king; he would 
 not have made him a poor man, a despised man, a suf- 
 ferer; the true completion was that he was indeed a 
 prince, a king, a conqueror, but that he was at the same 
 time, and eminently, poor, despised, and a sufferer. But 
 this accords, in fact, after all, with the Old Testament, 
 for he was to spring from the decayed family of Jesse and 
 David; he was to be despised and rejected of men; he © 
 was to be a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; 
 his grave was to be appointed with the wicked, but with 
 the rich man was he to be in his death, and yet he was 
 to be a conqueror and a king, with a dominion wider 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 245 
 
 than Cesar ever won, and an empire more enduring 
 than any of the dynasties of kings. 
 
 And if this is true, then there is this presumption in 
 the case, that it was under the guidance of One Mind, 
 that it is the product of one plan, that it is not the work 
 of many minds acting independently or in concert, but 
 that there was one presiding Intellect that guided all 
 these writers, and adjusted all these parts one to an- 
 other, as much as there must have been if there had 
 been separate laborers working independently of each 
 other, and through many centuries, in forming the dif- 
 ferent parts of the Venus de Medici or the Apollo Bel- 
 videre. 
 
 Ul. The second point will relate to a peculiarity in 
 books as such, and in respect to which what has occur- 
 red to the Bible considered as a book can be best ex- 
 plained on the supposition that it is an inspired volume. 
 
 Books fall away in the progress of society; they drop 
 out of notice; they accomplish their purpose; they are 
 not missed. The peculiarity of the Bible on which I 
 wish to remark, and from which I shall draw this part 
 of my argument, is, that the Bible is 2o¢ a book of this 
 class. It does not drop out of notice; it has not accom- 
 plished its purpose; it does not fall away in the prog- 
 ress of events; it would be missed; it will not and 
 could not be spared. 
 
 There are three classes of books of the kind that I 
 now refer to. a 
 
 There are, first, those which, though they are founded 
 on truth, yet have no such merit as to make the world 
 anxious to retainthem., They have a local bearing and 
 a local reputation, but have no claim on the general at- 
 tention of mankind, and no merit that will convey them 
 down from age toage. The old paths are strewed with 
 
246 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 these remains of literature, and advancing generations 
 have no interest in gathering them up and preserving 
 them; and any man that makes a book must lay to his 
 soul—no very “ flattering unction”—the idea that prob- 
 ably this will be the fate of the book that he makes. 
 Commonplace books, poetry, novels, travels, biogra- 
 phies, histories, works of science, works on art, are thus 
 dropped out of view and perish, or are preserved in the 
 alcoves of a great library, or are among the rarities 
 which antiquarians gather. The prima facie evidence 
 in regard to an old book is that it is worthless, because 
 itisrare; for if it had been valuable it would have been 
 repeaied. and would not have been rare. 
 
 There are, secondly, those which have been superseded 
 by better books on the same subject. Of these the 
 number is already vastly large, and is constantly accu- 
 mulating. Multitudes of books once useful have drop- 
 ped away from the memory of mankind to be recovered 
 no more—books that are gone with the volumes of 
 Nathan the Prophet and Iddo the Seer (2 Chron., ix., 
 29)—books that have absolutely perished, while those 
 that remain of that class go largely to swell the num- 
 ber of volumes on the shelves ‘of our great libraries— 
 books useful as illustrating the history of science and 
 art, and the development of human affairs—books useful 
 to the antiquarian, but books no longer useful as rep- 
 resenting the real state of human knowledge. Science 
 dis enlarged. What was formerly regarded as science 
 is no longer such; and the books of Galen, Hippocrates, 
 Mela, Roger Bacon, occupy substantially the same place 
 in science which the works of Abelard and Duns Scotus 
 —may I not add Turretin—do in theology. The chem- 
 istry of the Middle Ages, the chemistry of Bagdad, was 
 a different thing from the chemistry of Lavoisier, of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 247 
 
 Priestley, of Black, and of Sir Humphry Davy; and the 
 books even of these men are also vanishing fast, and are 
 taking their places with those that are mainly interest- 
 ing to the antiquarian alone. 
 
 There are, thirdly, books that are false in science, in 
 philosophy, in the facts affirmed, that pass away, of 
 course, when the truth is discovered. All the works of 
 Ptolemy, and all the books founded on the Ptolemaic 
 system of the heavens, ingenious, labored, and profound 
 as they were, passed away, of course, when the Coper- 
 - nican theory was established; and those books now, like 
 thousands of others, are of use only as marking the his- 
 tory of science, or as illustrating the powers of the hu- 
 man mind, or as showing, by contrast, the wonderful 
 wisdom of the Creator in the actual structure of the 
 universe and the beauty of the Copernican system. 
 
 The question now is, Whether the Bible is a book 
 that belongs to either of these classes; a book to pass 
 away with advancing knowledge, and in the progress 
 of ages; a book to be dropped; a book that is to lie 
 hidden in the alcoves of great libraries; a book that is 
 to be of interest and value only to the antiquarian. If 
 it is not so, then why is not so? 
 
 The Bible is noé a book to be dropped and forgotten. 
 Whatever may be said of it, it is noé to occupy the 
 same place as those books which, from any cause, the 
 world is “ willing to let die.” It has held its place in 
 the world longer than any other book or books, unless: 
 it be true that the writings of Confucius go back to as 
 remote a period as the composition of the book of Job. 
 It has passed through innumerable revolutions in goy- 
 ernments, in opinions, in philosophy, in manners, cus- 
 toms, and laws. It has made its way in the world under 
 _all forms of government—monarchical, aristocratic, re- 
 
248 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 publican, democratic. It has held on its steady course 
 when Aristotle was in the ascendant and controlled the 
 mind of Europe, and when he was dethroned, and Plato 
 rose in the ascendant. It has held its way in the great 
 change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican systems 
 of astronomy, and in all the revolutions which have 
 been made in science and the arts. Many of those arts 
 and much of that science it has modified; many of the 
 laws which rule among the nations, and no small part 
 of the customs of social life among the most refined 
 people, it has originated or shaped; it has seen systems * 
 of government and systems of religion pass away, and 
 it still lives. The Bible, in the parts then composed, was 
 among the books that influenced human affairs when 
 Nineveh stood where its buried ruins now are; when 
 Babylon was great and magnificent, where now the 
 wild beasts of the desert lie down, and satyrs dance, 
 and owls dwell, and dragons cry (Isa., xili., 22); when 
 Tyre was the mistress of the seas, now a place where 
 the fisherman dries his nets; long before Hesiod and 
 Homer sang; when uncivilized and savage men wan- 
 dered over the Seven Hills on the Tiber, and when not 
 a hut stood on the banks of the Thames. 
 
 The Bible has survived all attacks, and they have not 
 been few or unskillful; and it has now a hold on the 
 world which it never had before, and the world would 
 now more unwillingly than ever before “let it die.” It 
 is translated into more languages than any other book; 
 it has been transcribed more frequently, and with more 
 care, than any other book; it is more frequently printed 
 than any other book; it is more embellished with the 
 highest ornaments of art than any other book; it lies 
 on more tables in the dwellings of the intelligent and 
 the refined than any other book. More cultivated minds 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 249 
 
 have been employed in defending and illustrating it 
 than any other book; more learning has been expended 
 on it than on any other book; more keen and sagacious 
 criticism has been employed on it than perhaps on all 
 other books put together. More such minds are en- 
 gaged in defending it now than ever were before. More 
 men are employed in translating it, and more presses 
 are at work in printing it than ever before. It is doing 
 more to influence the world than it has done in any for- 
 mer age. It is working its way among the nations of 
 the earth; changing customs and laws; originating in- 
 stitutions of learning and benevolence; modifying pun- 
 ishments; influencing the treatment of prisoners; break- 
 ing off the shackles of slavery; and elevating the char- 
 acter and position of woman, as it has never done before, 
 It is recognized as authority in more colleges and schools 
 than it has ever been before; and if there are more at- 
 tacks made on it from scientific sources, it is also true 
 that more defenders from the same source arise to show 
 that it is not inconsistent with the best deductions of 
 science, ‘The simplest and most philosophical way of 
 explaining all this is, that the book had a higher origin 
 than man. 
 
 Il. My third remark will relate to the place which 
 the Bible has in history, and the point of the remark 
 will be, that the Bible contains records and statements 
 on historical subjects which can be best explained also 
 on the supposition that it is an inspired book. 
 
 (1.) The first observation here is, that it is the only 
 history of the world that traces human affairs up to 
 their origin. Following back any other history, and en- 
 deavoring to ascertain the origin of things in the early 
 transactions in our world, we soon come to the region 
 of fable, of legend, of myth, of night; we reach a point 
 
 L yi 
 
250 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 where all anterior in the history is manifestly the work 
 of the imagination or the invention of national pride. 
 In Egypt, in India, in China, in the African tribes, in 
 Mexico and Peru, and to a great extent in Greece, we 
 soon come into the region of night; and even of Rome, 
 who, since the work of Niebuhr, will affirm, notwith- 
 standing the records of Livy, that we have any exact 
 knowledge of what occurred in its early history? Be- 
 gin, in your investigation of past events, where profane 
 history begins, and you are plunged into the midst of a 
 state of affairs of whose origin you know nothing, and 
 where the mind wanders in perfect night and can find 
 no rest. Kingdoms are seen, but no one can tell when 
 or how they were founded; cities appear whose origin 
 no one knows; heroes are playing their part in the great 
 and mysterious drama, but no one knows whence they 
 came or what are their designs; races of beings are 
 seen whose origin is unknown, and the past periods of 
 whose existence upon the earth no one can determine— 
 races formed no one can tell for what purpose or by 
 what hand. Vast multitudes of beings are suffering 
 and dying for causes which no one can explain; one 
 generation in its own journey to the grave treads over 
 the monuments of extinct generations, and with the me- 
 morials of fearful changes and convulsions in the past 
 all around it of which no one can give an account. Be- 
 gin your knowledge of the past at the remotest period 
 to which profane history would conduct you, and you 
 are in the midst of chaos, and you can not advance a 
 single step without plunging into deeper night—a night 
 strikingly resembling that described in the oldest book 
 in the Bible itself, and the oldest book in the world, as 
 the abode of the dead: “The land of darkness and the 
 shadow of death; a land of darkness as Garkness itself; 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. a | 
 
 and of the shadow of death without any order, and 
 where the light is as darkness” (Job, x., 21, 22). 
 
 (2.) The Bible is the only book that explains the ori- 
 gin of things—the creation of the earth and the heav- 
 ens—the creation of man, and the creation of the vege- 
 tables and animals that people the globe. True science 
 does not pretend to explain those things; for, whatever 
 false science may attempt, true science pauses before it 
 reaches the point of the creation of matter or the origin 
 of life. It finds matter, and it finds life, at the begin- 
 ning of all its own investigations; nor do the labors of 
 the chemist and of the physiologist go behind those 
 facts as already existing to tell how they came into be- 
 ing. The Bible does. 
 
 (3.) The Bible, so far as secular history becomes in- 
 telligible, and at the point where it becomes intelligi- 
 ble, accords with and explains the existing state of 
 things. The tenth chapter of Genesis, almost entirely 
 a dry list of names—apparently as dry and unmeaning 
 as the muster-roll of an army, or as Homev’s list of he- 
 roes and ships in the first book of the [liad—contains, 
 in fact, the only clear and intelligible account of the 
 peopling of our globe, and the origin of the nations that 
 now dwell upon the earth. It is a document which 
 could not have been fabricated any more than one be- 
 forehand could fabricate the names of the soldiers in an 
 army, and yet it is the only document which we pos- 
 sess that tells how the world was divided and settled. 
 The nations that dwell in Europe, in Asia, and in Afri- 
 ca can, for the most part, be distinctly traced up in 
 their origin to the men whose names occur there ; and 
 without this dry document, all accounts of the peopling 
 of the globe would be darkness and chaos. 
 
 (4.) The Bible explains facts that exist which would 
 be otherwise inexplicable. 
 
252 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 In a state of feeling now extensively prevalent among 
 scientific men, there are many who would shrink from 
 avowing their belief in the first four chapters of Gene- 
 sis, and there are many who would desire to turn those 
 chapters into myth and fable, as containing statements 
 which no scientific man would literally receive. In a 
 course of lectures, or even in preaching, it might seem 
 to the view of many such men to argue more of reck- 
 lessness than of prudence to select those chapters as 
 the subject of illustration, and there are not a few hav- 
 ing high claims to eminence in science who would turn 
 away from the statements in those chapters as belong- 
 ing wholly to myths and legends. 
 
 Yet in those chapters are contained all that we know, 
 if we know any thing in regard to the origin of the real 
 facts that exist in our world. We, who hold to the in- 
 spiration of the Bible, believe that the record in those 
 chapters will explain the origin of all that now exists 
 on earth; we are certain that if that explanation fails, 
 we shall look in vain elsewhere for any explanation—to 
 history; to the reasonings of philosophers; to the geol- 
 ogist; to the antiquarian; to the poets. 
 
 (a) Those chapters explain the origin of things—the 
 creation of the heavens and the earth. Science does 
 not explain the creation of the world—the origin of the 
 universe. It has no facts on that subject with which 
 to deal; its work commences when the work of crea- 
 tion is done; when matter already has a being, and 
 when the laws of matter are already established. It 
 explains the laws by which the elements of matter com- 
 bine or are moved, not how they were made; it ex- 
 plains the proportion of the sixty or more substances 
 of which our world is composed; the laws of the chem- 
 ical elements; the laws of galvanism, of light, of heat, 
 of electricity, of /ife—not how they were made. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 208 
 
 (6) The Bible explains the order in which things were 
 made on the earth. Till the discoveries in the recent 
 science of geology, the world has been in the dark in re- 
 gard to that order, and the naked statement in the first 
 chapter of Genesis, appealing, up to that period—that 
 is, for nearly six thousand years—to the mere faith of 
 mankind, has been all that the world has had to rely 
 on. Two things are remarkable in regard to that state- 
 ment in the first chapter of Genesis, with all that there 
 is 77 the chapter still unexplained and mysterious: one 
 is, that the order of the creation as there stated corre- 
 sponds with singular accuracy with the order as dis- 
 closed by geology; the other is, that geology now af- - 
 firms, from the testimony of the earth itself, that there 
 were successive creations, as is affirmed in Genesis; in 
 other words, that one class of animals has not been de- 
 veloped from a previous order of beings. The Bible af 
 firms thus; and if there is any one thing now clear in 
 the developments of geology, it is, that one race was 
 swept off to make way for another; and that one suc- 
 ceeded another in a certain order, and that order is the 
 one found in the Bible; that man was the last in the 
 series of the creations; and that there has been, in fact, 
 no work of creation—no new matter formed—no new 
 races of animals or vegetables brought upon the earth 
 since man appeared. ‘“'Thus,” says Moses, “ the heavens 
 and the earth were finished, and all the host of them” 
 (Gen., ii., 1). How did Moses, or whoever was the au- 
 thor of the statement in Genesis, know this? What are 
 the probabilities that an ancient writer uninspired, un- 
 dertaking to give an account of the creation of the 
 world, would hit on that order? Where else has it 
 been done; where has it been hinted at ? 
 
 (c) The Bible affirms and explains the fact to which 
 
954 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 all true science is tending—the unity of the race. That 
 fact is stated and affirmed; that fact is the basis of the 
 doctrine of universal depravity as stated in the Bible; 
 that fact is the foundation of all its statements about 
 the work of redemption; that fact is the foundation of 
 all that there is in the Bible in regard to the rights of 
 man. 
 
 But that fact of the unity of the race has been by no 
 means apparent to men, and is a doctrine the statement 
 of which in the Bible is most easily explained by the 
 idea of inspiration, even if it can be explained in any 
 other way. It is morally certain now that men will 
 come up to that doctrine in their own investigations; 
 but it is by no means a doctrine so obvious that it 
 would be laid at the foundation of a system as a mat- 
 ter of course, or a doctrine in reference to which there 
 are no scientific difficulties to be removed. The varie- 
 ties of language; the varieties of complexion; the forms 
 of the skull, and the facial angle, and many other things 
 in the formation and anatomy of the human frame, fa- 
 miliar to those who have devoted their attention to this 
 subject; the varieties in the four great divisions of the 
 race—the Mongolian, the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the 
 American—all show how daring and bold, so to speak, 
 was the doctrine laid at the very foundation of the 
 whole book, that the races of men are all descended 
 from one pair; that “ God has made of one blood all the 
 nations of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth” 
 (Acts, xvii., 26); and that “the whole earth was of one 
 language and of one speech” (Gen., xi., 1). Yet the 
 tendency of science now is to demonstrate the unity of 
 the human race; its tendency also is to demonstrate 
 the original oneness of language. All the languages 
 of the earth have been traced with very great clearness 
 
 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 255 
 
 now to three sources, with the highest probability that 
 they will yet be traced back to one; and it has not yet 
 been demonstrated that the varieties of the human race 
 in complexion and in anatomical structure are 2o¢ sus- 
 ceptible of explanation on the supposition that the race 
 was originally one. 
 
 Man, in the mean time, in the Bible, is kept wholly 
 distinct from all the inferior creation. A line as marked 
 as any line can be runs through the Bible between man 
 and all the inferior races. There is no intimation that 
 one has been developed from the other, or that the one 
 is to be treated as the other. Man alone is a moral 
 agent; is subject to law; is responsible. Man is a sin- 
 ner; is redeemed; is immortal. Man is made in the 
 image of God. He has a soul. He is a wandering child 
 of God, to be governed by moral law; to be restrained 
 by motives; to be guided by truth; to be redeemed by 
 the blood of the atonement; to live forever with God. 
 He is not derived or developed from the ourang-outang 
 or the monkey; he is, in the Bible, a new creation, as 
 geology now aftirms him to have been. 
 
 Whence came these views and thoughts into the 
 minds of the sacred writers? How, on subjects so diffi- 
 cult, and on which there was to be such variety in the 
 opinions of men before these truths were reached by 
 the slow process of science, did they at once anticipate 
 all that would be established on the subject in the far- 
 distant ages, and state at the outset what man would be 
 led to believe at the last? The simplest explanation of 
 this is, that that Eternal Spirit that sees and knows all 
 truth guided them above the exercise of their own pow- 
 ers to the statement of those truths to which the world 
 would at last come, but which would be reached by 
 men in their own investigations only after ages had 
 passed away. 
 
256 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 The time will not allow me to pursue this train of 
 thought farther, or to apply it to other subjects that lie 
 equally within its range. A farther application of the 
 thought would relate to such subjects as the fall of 
 man, and the fact of universal depravity; to the place 
 which man occupies among the creatures of God here 
 below; to the subject of death—especially death in 
 man; to the origin of the languages of the earth, and 
 to the dispersion of the nations. The question in re- 
 gard to all these points would be whether any men ° 
 would have been likely to have made the statements in 
 the Bible unless they were inspired. 
 
 IV. The fourth point to which I shall advert in illus- 
 tration of the subject of inspiration will pertain to the 
 truths communicated in the Bible. The argument in 
 the case will be, that those truths lie beyond the range 
 of the unaided human powers. 
 
 This remark might be illustrated on a wide scale in 
 reference to the powers of the human mind as existing 
 any where, and, in the highest sense of the proposition, 
 it would be that those truths are beyond the highest 
 human intellects, or the power of such intellects to orig- 
 inate them, however those powers may be cultivated— 
 beyond the reach and range of philosophy in its purest 
 and most exalted forms. It might be questionable with 
 some whether that could be demonstrated, but it is not 
 necessary to consider that particular point in illustrat- 
 ing the proposition now before us. The real inquiry is 
 whether thoge truths were beyond the natural powers 
 of the men actually employed in composing the Bible. 
 It may be, indeed, that the natural powers of those men 
 were not inferior to the highest forms of intellect known 
 elsewhere in philosophy and science; it may be that 
 the intellects of Moses, and Isaiah, and David, and Paul 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 257 
 
 were by nature equal to the great lawgivers, poets, 
 reasoners, orators, philosophers of the world, and that, 
 in themselves, they deserve a place by the side of 
 Numa, and Lycurgus, and Demosthenes, and Plato, and 
 Burke; but still the real question now is whether they, 
 whatever were their native endowments, were compe- 
 tent, without aid from on high, to disclose the truths 
 actually found in the Bible. We are to remember, too, 
 that whatever were the native endowments of Moses, 
 and Isaiah, and David, and Paul, they were not the oly © 
 men employed in writing the Bible. The Bible is not 
 their work alone. They are not its authors as a whole. 
 We are to bear in mind who they were associated with, 
 and then to inquire whether the peasants, and shep- 
 herds, and fishermen that, in fact, wrote a large part of 
 the Bible, were competent to be associated with them 
 in the composition of the Bible as @ whole—whether a 
 common stone-mason could be associated with Phidias 
 in the design of the Minerva, or common bricklayers 
 with Michael Angelo in the structure of St. Peter’s, and 
 in the mosaics that adorn it. 
 
 (1.) Who, then, were the men that actually wrote the 
 Bible? 
 
 The Bible came from a land undistinguished for lit- 
 erature; aland not rich in classical associations; a land 
 not distinguished for pushing its discoveries into the 
 region of science. Chaldea had its observatory, and the 
 dwellers there early looked out on the stars and gave 
 them names; Egypt had its temples where the truths 
 of science, as well as the precepts of religion, were com- 
 mitted to the sacred priesthood; Greece had academic 
 groves; but Judea had neither. To such things the 
 attention of the nation was never turned. We have all 
 their literature; all their science; all their knowledge 
 
258 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 of art—and all this is in the Bible. Among the ancients 
 they were regarded as a narrow-minded, a bigoted, a 
 superstitious people. They did not travel abroad as 
 Greek philosophers did, to converse with sages in other 
 lands, nor did they ever seem anxious to obtain any 
 knowledge except that which was originated in their 
 own land. Pythagoras and Plato went abroad to con- 
 verse with the wise of other lands; Herodotus to learn 
 the facts of history; Solon and Lycurgus left their 
 country to observe the working of the laws in other 
 countries, and to give sanction to their own; but Moses 
 left the court of Pharaoh and went into a desert; Isaiah, 
 Daniel, and David never traveled to gain knowledge, 
 and though Paul traveled much and far, it was never 
 to gain knowledge, but to wmpart it to mankind. The 
 idea is, that in the various departments of literature 
 they could not come into competition with the classic 
 writers of antiquity; that they made no pretensions to 
 philosophy; that they were undistinguished in what 
 the world regards as learning and eloquence; and, es- 
 pecially, that they had almost no knowledge of science 
 as understood in the present age. ‘They made no pre- 
 tensions to what now constitutes the science of astron- 
 omy, chemistry, anatomy, mechanics; and, as compared 
 with the philosophers of Greece, and the literary and 
 scientific men of Germany, France, England, and our 
 own country, the ancient Jew could have no claim to 
 eminence, nor, in relation to these things, has he trans- 
 mitted any thing that the world thinks worth presery- 
 ing. It may add to the force of this consideration to 
 remember that all the eminence of any kind which they 
 had in ancient times ceased with the sacred writers, and 
 that with the exception of Josephus and Philo, after the 
 destruction of their Temple, they were of all pretended 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 259 
 
 literary people the most puerile and trifling. They 
 wrote no poetry worth preserving or reading; they 
 produced no orators or historians of any distinction ; 
 they pushed forward no discoveries in science, and their 
 writings, as produced in the Talmud, are the most dis- 
 tinguished of all compositions for frivolaus things and 
 for childish conceits. The writers of the Bible were 
 mostly shepherds, peasants, fishermen, with no other 
 and no better training than are now found in men of 
 that rank in life. 
 
 As an illustration of this point, I may refer particu- 
 larly to the apostle John. He was a fisherman on the 
 Lake of Tiberias when Jesus first saw him, and called 
 him to the work of an apostle. We have his Gospel, 
 and we have his book of “ Revelation,” and, bearing in 
 remembrance that he.was @ fisherman, we are to ask 
 what would fishermen taken from the banks of the Del- 
 aware, from Marblehead and Gloucester, or from the 
 Banks of Newfoundland, be likely to produce if called 
 to compose a book on the subject of John’s Gospel, or 
 the Book of Revelation? Suppose he were called to 
 delineate a perfect character; to represent an incarnate 
 God—living, acting, and speaking with man, and as a 
 man; to compose or record from memory discourses of 
 the profoundest character respecting God; to describe 
 future scenes, in the world’s great changes, in pictures 
 and symbols, what would be likely to be the result of 
 such an effort? In illustrating this point, in language 
 better than I can use, I may be permitted here to intro- 
 duce an extract from a discourse by Dr. Dwight: “'The 
 apostle John,” says he, “was born in an age when the 
 philosophy of his country was a mere mass of quib- 
 bling, its religion a compound of pride and bigotry, and. 
 its worship a ceremonious parade. His lineage, his cir- 
 
260 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 cumstances, his education, and his employment were 
 those of a fisherman. On what natural principle can it 
 be accounted for that, like the sun breaking out of an 
 evening cloud, this plain man, in these circumstances, 
 should, at an advanced age, burst upon mankind with a 
 flood of effulgence and glory? Whence did it arise 
 that, in purity of precept, discernment of truth, and an 
 acquaintance with the moral character of man, and the 
 attributes of his Maker, this peasant leaves Socrates, 
 Plato, and Cicero out of sight and out of remembrance ? 
 Do you question the truth of this representation? The 
 ‘proof is at hand and complete. There is not a child of 
 fifteen in this house who, if possessed of the common 
 education of this land, would not disdain to worship 
 their gods or to embrace their religion. But Bacon 
 and Boyle; Butler and Berkeley; Newton and Locke; 
 Addison and Johnson; Jones and Horseley, have sub- 
 missively embraced the religion of St. John, and wor- 
 shiped the God whose character he has unfolded. Their 
 systems have long since gone to the grave of oblivion. 
 His has been animated with increasing vigor to the 
 present hour, and will live and flourish through endless 
 ages. Their writings have not made one man virtuous. 
 Tis have peopled heaven with the children of light. 
 The seventeenth chapter of his gospel, written as it is 
 with the simplicity of a child, yet in grandeur of con- 
 ception and in splendor of moral excellence triumphs 
 with inexpressible glory over all the efforts of human 
 genius, and looks down from heaven on the prongs 
 labors of infidelity.”* 
 
 (2.) The class of truths discussed and disclosed by 
 these men may be referred to as a second illustration 
 of the evidence of their inspiration. A remark or two, 
 
 * Sermons, vol. ii., p. 436, 437. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 261 
 
 without attempting now to demonstrate the truth of 
 the remark, or to illustrate it, is all that the time will 
 admit. _ 
 
 (a) All that we truly know about God is from the 
 Bible. I say “know ;’ I do not say tmagine or conjec- 
 ture. What did the Egyptians, the Persians, the Assyr- 
 ians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans snow 
 about God? What did the ancient inhabitants of Brit- 
 ain, the Druids, the Celts, the Gaelic tribes? What did 
 the Goths, the Vandals, the Gauls, the Visigoths, that 
 came pouring down from the North on the Roman em- 
 pire? What do the people of China, of India, of Tar- 
 tary, or the tribes of Africa know? What do the fol- 
 lowers of Mohammed, except as Mohammed learned it 
 from the Bible? What has philosophy ever taught 
 men about God? What does science teach them now ? 
 Does the telescope reach his throne? Does the micro- 
 scope disclose him? They disclose something, you say; 
 and so it may be, or at least they lay the foundation of 
 reasoning about some things pertaining to God — per- 
 haps to his existence; his greatness; his power; his 
 knowledge. But how about those things which we are 
 most interested in knowing—his moral character; his 
 mercy ; his justice; his goodness; his truth—about the 
 question whether he is worthy of confidence? How 
 long in the laboratory will the chemist toil before he 
 will obtain from earths and alkalies—from the crucible 
 and the blow-pipe—an answer to these questions? Just 
 as long as his predecessors of the Middle Ages, the al- 
 chemists, would have toiled to find the philosopher’s 
 stone or the elixir of life. 7 
 
 (0) All that we know about the immortality of the 
 soul we learn from the Bible. I say here also, all that 
 we “know,” not what we may conjecture and wish for. 
 
262 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Do philosophers disclose that? Do astronomers? Do 
 chemists? Do scientific men, as such, even believe in 
 the immortality of the soul? If they do belieye it, do 
 they believe it as the result of their discoveries in sci- 
 ence? Does the chemist believe it because he has found 
 the proof of it in his laboratory? Do mental philoso- 
 phers believe it on the ground of their own reasonings? 
 The profoundest argument on this subject in ancient or 
 modern philosophy is undoubtedly that of Plato in the 
 “Gorgias.” And yet who is convinced by that now? 
 Who does not rise from the perusal of that argument 
 with the conviction—painful and sad on his mind—that 
 if this is a@d/, then, indeed, ‘“‘ shadows, clouds, and dark- 
 ness” rest on the whole subject? You could not con- 
 vince a child in any of our Sunday-schools, from that 
 argument, that his soul is immortal. Hear Cicero again 
 on that argument of Plato, in a passage which I have 
 quoted to you before: “I know not how it is, but when 
 T read I assent; but when I lay down the book, and be- 
 gin by myself to reflect on the immortality of the soul, 
 all that assent glides away.’* 
 
 (c) All that we know about a plan of salvation is 
 learned from the Bible, not from philosophy or science. 
 Science does not disclose such a plan—any plan by 
 which a sinner may be saved. It is not, and it is not 
 supposed to be, a part of the province of science to re- 
 veal such a plan, and scientific men, as such, are careful 
 to keep their own province distinct from any such plan, 
 
 * Marcus. Quid tibi ergo opera nostra opus est? num eloquentia 
 Platonem superare possumus? evolve diligenter ejus eum librum, qui 
 est de animo; amplius quod desideres, nihil erit. Awditor. Feri me- 
 hercule, et quidem szpius, sed nescio quo modo, dum lego, assentior ; 
 cum posui librum, et mecum ipse detmmortalitate animorum capi cogitare, 
 assensio omnis tlla elabitur.— Cicero, Tusc. Queest., lib. i, cap. xii. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 263 
 
 or the suggestion of any such plan. However much, in 
 other respects, scientific men may seem to encroach on 
 the doctrines of the Bible; however the geologist, to 
 use a phrase derived from the law, but which may be 
 regarded as quite expressive of the idea, may claim 
 “concurrent jurisdiction” with the Bible over the sub- 
 jects involved in its department, yet nothing of this 
 kind is claimed or is manifest in regard to a plan of re- 
 demption for sinners, or a way of saving men. Neither 
 the astronomer, nor the anatomist, nor the chemist 
 claims for himself any special knowledge on this sub- 
 ject above other men, nor in the books published in 
 these departments of science is there any suggestion 
 about the way in which a sinner may be saved. What- 
 ever may have been claimed by “ philosophers,” so 
 called, in ancient times, in regard to this; whatever 
 Socrates or Plato may have suggested, yet it is certain 
 that the writers on mental philosophy of these times do 
 not regard the matter as coming within the cognizance 
 of their department of learning, and that, in reference 
 to a plan of salvation for sinners, we should be as un- 
 successful in our inquiries in the writings of Kant, of 
 Sir William Hamilton, and of J. Stewart Mill, as we 
 should in a treatise on Logarithms or Fluxions. It has 
 somehow occurred to the writers of the Bible to state 
 such a plan; to make it prominent; to weave it into 
 the entire structure of the book; to make it the grand 
 thing on which the composition of the book turns; to 
 make it the dea, in fact, running through the entire 
 collection of books from Genesis to Revelation, sixty in 
 number, and composed by perhaps a hundred different 
 authors—an idea that runs through the book as really 
 as the wrath of Achilles runs through all the books of 
 the Iliad, or the wrath of Juno through the Ainiad, or 
 
264 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the fall of man through the Paradise Lost — though 
 these are respectively the production of one man—of 
 one mind. 
 
 (7) All that we know about a future state is from 
 the Bible. I do not say all that we conjecture or im- 
 agine, but all that we know. Science does not pertain 
 to that world, nor does it determine any thing on the 
 question whether there is to be a future world, or, if 
 there is, what it is to be. The crucible and the blow- 
 pipe impart no light on that subject; the telescope has 
 nothing to reveal in regard to it; the geologist is labor- 
 ing to determine something in regard to the intermina- 
 ble past, but he has nothing to reveal in regard to the 
 interminable future. The footprints of birds, and the 
 fossil bones, and the rocks reveal something in regard 
 to the past, but they have nothing to say about that 
 which is to come. Nor can any man carry the deduc- 
 tions of his science—natural philosophy, mental philos- 
 ophy, astronomy, chemistry, fluxions—a single step be- 
 yond the grave. Nor does any one come back from 
 that world, if there is such a world, to tell the scientific 
 man and the philosopher that there zs such a world, and 
 what it 7s. Apart from the Bible, we are in utter dark- 
 ness—a “land of darkness and of the shadow of death; 
 a land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the shad- 
 ow of death, without any order, and where the light is 
 as darkness” (Job, x., 21, 22). 
 
 (3.) The truths disclosed in the Bible are up to this 
 age, and are still in advance of the world. Science has 
 never come up to them; the progress made in the 
 world in our own marvelous age has not superseded 
 them. The Bible has not been dropped by the way, as 
 the works of Averroes, of Galen, of Roger Bacon have 
 been; nor has it found its place in the alcoves of the 
 
- EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 265 
 
 library where lie superseded and forgotten books of 
 past times. It lives. It has a vitality and an energy 
 which it never had before—in the nineteenth century 
 as much ahead of the world, in its own departments, as 
 it was in the time when its great truths were first 
 preached on Mars’ Hill by Paul. This remark I shall 
 have occasion to illustrate in the tenth and concluding 
 Lecture of this course, and it must now, therefore, be 
 taken for granted. 
 
 (4.) It remains, then, to ask how these men knew 
 these things; how they were able to propound these 
 truths, which are to live through all the changes of the 
 world; to influence permanently and perpetually the 
 nations of the earth; to survive while countless gener- 
 ations of men pass ene? 
 
 Was it genius that produced the Bible? How came 
 these men to be endowed with such a genius? Why 
 has not the same thing occurred elsewhere among such 
 classes of men—peasants and fishermen? Where else 
 have such classes of men produced such a book? There 
 has been one Burns, one Bunyan, one Shakspeare—per- 
 haps a dozen or a score more of such men of remarkable 
 genius—plowmen, glovers, tinkers; but if all their com- 
 positions were put together, would they make one book ,; 
 would there be one plan; would there be unity of de- 
 sign; would there be such power in the volume; would 
 the volume commend itself so much to all classes of 
 nien; would it secure so permanent a hold; would it 
 perpetuate and extend itself so among the nations of 
 the earth; would it so meet the wants of man as a sin- 
 ner, as a sufferer, as a dying being, as immortal ? 
 
 Did the sacred writers borrow this from others? 
 From whom? From the Persian magi; from Chaldean 
 sages; from Egyptian priests? These were the only 
 
 M 
 
266 LECTURES ON THE ’ 
 
 ones to borrow from at the time when a considerable 
 part of the book was written, and they have not bor- 
 rowed from them. They had nothing, and they have 
 transmitted nothing to us which could be regarded as 
 the original of which the Bible is a copy ; and, what- 
 ever may be said of the Bible, it is an original book. 
 
 Is it the production of insanity ? Something like the 
 ravings of the Pythian priestess or the priest of Apollo; 
 something like those great thoughts which a mind like 
 that of Hamlet could produce, the workings of “ melan- 
 cholic madness of a delicate shade, in which the rea- 
 soning faculties, the intellect proper, so far from being 
 overcome or disordered, may, on the other hand, be ren- 
 dered more active and vigorous?”* It can not be nec- 
 essary to argue this. Perhaps an apology is necessary 
 for having alluded to it again. 
 
 Is it the result of inspiration? This is the remaining 
 solution. This, at least, will account for the facts. This 
 will explain all. This is the most simple and easy so- 
 lution; this is what they claim for themselves; this is 
 what has commended itself as the best solution of the 
 facts to the great mass of mankind for these eighteen 
 hundred years. This is dékely to be extensively the 
 opinion of mankind for gener ations to come. 
 
 That there are difficulties in the view which has now 
 been submitted to you is not to be denied. That there 
 are many questions which may be asked in regard to 
 the inspiration of the Bible, which, if they do not re- 
 main to be asked, remain to be answered, is to be ad- 
 mitted. That there are things in the Bible apparently 
 inconsistent with the high purpose of a revelation from 
 God; that there are apparent inconsistencies and con- 
 
 * Shakspeare’s Delineations of Insanity, etc., by A. O. Kellogg, J. 
 D5; "p: 36. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 267 
 
 tradictions in the book itself; that there are discrepan- 
 cies between its statements and the statements of secu- 
 lar history—not determined yet which is right; that 
 there are commands not easy to be reconciled with our 
 notions of justice and morality; that there are state- 
 ments which seem to conflict with many of the disclos- 
 ures of science, no friend of the Bible can deny. That 
 to solve these questions, and remove these difficulties, 
 would be the meritorious work of a long life, a field 
 worthy of the highest talent of any young man desir- 
 ous of rendering the most efficient service possible to 
 the Church of God, I most firmly believe. That there 
 és no work on the inspiration of the Bible that meets# 
 all these questions, and removes all these difficulties, so 
 that it would commend itself to a candid inquirer after 
 truth as entirely satisfactory, be he infidel or otherwise, 
 I think any one must admit who has had occasion to 
 examine what has been written on the subject. 
 
 But these admitted facts do not affect the reasoning 
 in this Lecture, if the reasoning has any value. The 
 difficulties of science yet unexplained, and that seem, 
 _as many of them do, to lie beyond the compass of the 
 human mind, do not affect the general course of argu- 
 ment in regard to astronomy, chemistry, geology, anat- 
 omy. ‘The apparent inconsistencies and contradictions 
 in the movements of the heavenly bodies are not al- 
 lowed. to set aside the deductions which seem to be 
 clearly established. Time does wonders in all sciences. 
 One after another difficulties are removed; a thing that 
 seemed to jar is shown to be, in fact, in harmony; what 
 seemed to be irreconcilable with something else is 
 shown to be, in fact, essential to the very existence, and 
 to the proper action of that “something else.” How 
 many difficulties, contradictions, discrepancies, thus si- 
 
* 
 
 268 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 lently vanish as light advances in the world, and as the 
 real harmonies of the universe are better understood ! 
 Thousands of hearts, and heads, and hands are thus 
 successfully toiling in removing the difficulties in na- 
 ture; intellects not less profound, learning not less ex- 
 tensive, hands not less active, are toiling in like manner, 
 and with as much prospect of success, in removing the 
 questions of difficulty in regard to the Bible. 
 
 It is said that much of the Bible relates to common 
 matters; to trifles; to things that men could learn 
 without a revelation; to things that are of no great 
 consequence; to things low and insignificant. 
 
 Much of this 7s so; and the same is as true of the 
 world as God made it as it is of the Bible that He has 
 revealed. Atoms; molecules; germs; infusoria; worms; 
 reptiles; insects made to torment and annoy; centi- 
 pedes; tarantulas; vermin—why all these things? 
 Would the God that revealed the great truths of hu- 
 man redemption “reveal,” if revelation it can be called, 
 so many trivial things in the Bible? Would the God 
 that made the sun, the stars, the milky way, the mil- 
 lions—the numberless millions of suns that flame in the 
 far distant realms of space, make and care for these 
 things so trivial; so annoying; so noxious ? 
 
 It is said that there are discrepancies; inconsisten- 
 cles; contradictions. 
 
 It is so, apparently. Are there none in nature that 
 science has not yet taught us how to reconcile and har- 
 monize? There was a discrepancy in the movements 
 of the planet Uranus, lying, as was supposed, on the 
 outer circle of the planetary worlds. It did not work 
 well. It did not keep its course. It bent out of its 
 way. It was not in harmony with the rest; nor could 
 astronomers tell why. _Le Verrier and Adams simulta- 
 
 f 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTFANITY. 269 
 
 neously gave their minds to the solution of the difii- 
 culty, and each suggested that there was another plan- 
 et, as yet unseen by man, far in the region beyond it. 
 The astronomer at Berlin pointed his telescope to the 
 spot where they said it would be found, and the har- 
 mony of the planetary system was restored. 
 
 Who knows what time may do in removing apparent 
 inconsistencies and contradictions? Listen to a remark 
 of Mr. Hume: “ No priestly dogmas ever shocked com- 
 mon sense more than the infinite divisibility of exten- 
 sion, with its consequences.”* 
 
 It is said that there are things taught, commanded, 
 and done in the Bible, as the command to Abraham to 
 offer up his son Isaac, and the command to destroy the 
 nations of Canaan, which it is difficult to reconcile with 
 our notions of morality. 
 
 This, also, is so; and the same thing is true of much 
 that God does in our world, and of much that he per- 
 mits. Who has explained these things? Who has been 
 able to show exactly how the things that occur on 
 earth under the divine administration — by the. order- 
 ings of His providence, and by His own hand, are con- 
 sistent with our notions of justice and right; our views 
 of morality; our conceptions of benevolence? When 
 there are any fewer difficulties in the facts in our world 
 than there are in this respect in the statements of the 
 Bible, then it will be proper, on this account, to make it 
 a special objection to the Bible as a work of God; when 
 men have succeeded in explaining the difficulties in the 
 facts as they occur under the divine administration, and 
 in showing how they are consistent with our notions of 
 justice, goodness, and morality, then it will remain to 
 inquire whether possibly the same explanation might 
 
 * Philosophical Works, vol. iv., p. 182. 
 
270 PECTURES ON THE 
 
 not remove all the difficulties from the same source 
 pertaining to the word of God. The entrance of sin; 
 the sorrows and woes of earth; the inequalities in the 
 human condition; the destruction of the innocent—of 
 women, and old men, and infants by the plague, by pes- 
 tilence, and by famine; the desolations of war, not less 
 savage and barbarous than the wars of Canaan; the 
 divine vengeance taken on nations through the agency 
 of the wicked passions of men—the love of conquest, 
 revenge, and ambition—O for the coming of some one, 
 gifted above all mortals hitherto, that shall be able to 
 explain these things, and to tell how they are consistent 
 with the character of a just and holy God; with our 
 conception of what is right, and of what would be for 
 the best; with our notions of benevolence, equity, right- 
 eousness—O for some gifted mind to tell how sin, and 
 woe, and death came into the universe at all! Til 
 such an appearing, what better can we do than to sup- 
 pose, in either case, that there may be principles at pres- 
 ent beyond our grasp that may explain the one and the 
 other; that the principles which would be applicable to 
 the one may be applicable to the other; that the God 
 of nature may be the God of the Bible. 
 
 These things constitute no great difficulty in the 
 practical affairs of life; they need constitute no great 
 difficulty in the practical matters of religion. ‘They do 
 not prove, in the one case, that the world is not the 
 workmanship of a pure and holy God; they do not 
 prove, in the other, that the Bible is not from the same 
 pure and holy Being. 
 
 Have we reached a conclusion on this subject which 
 will be satisfactory to your minds? Perhaps I ought 
 not to venture to affirm what I would hope may be 
 true. Have we removed all difficulties from the sub- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. are 
 
 ject? Assuredly this has not been done; nor, in a world 
 so full of difficulties on kindred subjects, could we hope 
 that this could be done. But, notwithstanding these 
 things, it may have been shown that the Bible is a book 
 whose origin is not to be accounted for by a reference 
 to human genius; and that the most simple and philo- 
 sophical explanation of the facts in regard to it is, that 
 it is given by INSPIRATION OF GoD—as the most satis- 
 factory explanation of our world, after all, with all its 
 difficulties, is, that it is THE CREATION OF GOD, 
 
272 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 LECTURE VU 
 
 THE EVIDENCE OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY 
 FROM THE PERSONAL CHARACTER AND THE INCARNA- 
 TION OF CHRIST. 
 
 THe question which, in history, has agitated the 
 world more perhaps than any other, is that which was 
 asked by Pilate, “What shall I do with Jesus which is 
 called Christ ?” (Matt., xxvii, 22). In history the ques- 
 tion has been, What view shall be taken of his person? 
 What origin and rank shall be ascribed to him? -What 
 place shall he have among those whose hfe and teach- 
 ings have materially affected the condition of the 
 world? Shall he be regarded as a mere man, “natu- 
 rally as fallible and peccable as other men?” Shall he 
 be regarded as a mere man, but, unlike other men in 
 this respect, that he was absolutely perfect and pure ? 
 Shall he be regarded as a phantasm, appearing in the 
 form of humanity, and living, suffering, dying in ap- 
 pearance only? Shall he be regarded as a being of a 
 higher order actually descending to the earth, and liy- 
 ing among men—an angel; an archangel; a loftier being 
 still, as near to God as a created being can be, sent into 
 the world to accomplish a great work for men? Shall 
 he be regarded as the most highly endowed in genius 
 of any of our own race; forming some great plan; and 
 accomplishing his work by the mere greatness of his 
 genius? Shall we regard him as a mythical being, and 
 all that has been said of him as embodying only the 
 conceptions of men forming a system of imposture or 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. o7a 
 
 delusion around him as a nucleus, and arranging the 
 ideas of that system as if they had been expressed in 
 his life? Shall we regard him as God himself in his 
 own essence incarnate; or as a person 77 the essence of 
 God incarnate; or as a form of the mere manifestation 
 of the Deity in our world? Shall we regard him as 
 having one nature or two; one will or two; as a per- 
 fect man having a “reasonable soul” as well as a body, 
 united with the divinity; or shall we regard him as a 
 man only as he had a bodily form in which God, as such, 
 performed all the functions of the soul? Has the world 
 come to any settled views on these subjects, or is it 
 likely that it ever will? Enemies and friends; sages, 
 fathers, priests; synods and councils embracing the 
 learning and piety of the world; good men and bad 
 men; historians and philosophers; the orthodox and 
 the heretical, have endeavored for eighteen hundred 
 years to answer the question which so much perplexed 
 Pilate, “ What shall be done with Jesus?” Men of pro- 
 found erudition, assuming that there was a real person- 
 age who bore the name, have brought, as Strauss has 
 done, the vast resources of their learning to the inquiry 
 whether all else in regard to him could not be explained 
 ‘on the supposition that his religion is a “myth;” men 
 of brilliant imaginations, entering the field of romance, 
 like Renan, have inquired whether all that occurred in 
 his life can not be explained on the supposition that he 
 was a young man of marvelous genius, awaking grad- 
 ually to the consciousness of his own great powers, and 
 himself deluded with the idea of a universal empire. 
 The “ orthodox” world has believed that his true place 
 in history can be assigned only on the supposition that 
 he was the only perfect man that has ever trod the 
 M 2 
 
974 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 earth since the first Adam fell, and that he was the in- 
 carnate Son of God. 
 
 Pilate was perplexed. An honest man would have 
 settled the question at once. The world has been per- 
 plexed. Can we now, after the lapse of eighteen hund- 
 red years, so determine what is to be “done” with him 
 as to find evidence in his character and claims that he 
 was sent from God, and that his religion.is true? 
 
 The subject of this Lecture, therefore, will be, The 
 evidence of the divine origin of Christianity from the 
 personal character and the incarnation of Christ. 
 
 As preparing the way for this argument, it may be 
 proper to refer a little more fully to the nature of the 
 perplexities which have been felt on the subject, and to 
 the various answers which have been given to the in- 
 quiry involved in the question of Pilate. 
 
 The Gnostics regarded him as an zeon or “ emanation” 
 from God, “the first and brightest emanation of the 
 Deity, who appeared upon earth to rescue mankind 
 from various errors, and to reveal a new system of truth 
 and perfection.”* He was, in their apprehension, neither 
 truly God nor truly man. “Not truly God, because 
 they held him, though begotten of God, to be yet much 
 inferior to the Father; nor truly man, because every 
 thing concrete and corporeal they believed to be in- 
 trinsically and essentially evil; so that most of them 
 divested Christ of a material body, and denied him to 
 have suffered for our sakes what he is recorded to have 
 endured.” He was a phantasm that appeared first on 
 the banks of the Jordan, and lived, and suffered, and 
 died in appearance only. t 
 
 According to Arius, he is “totally and essentisii 
 
 * Gibbon, Decline and Fall, i., 256. 
 + Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., vol. i., p. 111, 171-181. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 275 
 
 distinct from the Father; the first and noblest of those 
 created beings whom God the Father formed out of 
 nothing, and the instrument which the Father used in 
 creating the universe, and, therefore, inferior to the 
 Father both in nature and in dignity.”* “Though the 
 Son of God was united with human nature on the birth 
 of Jesus, yet that Son of God was a xrisua [creation]. 
 He indeed existed long before that birth, but not from 
 eternity.”+ 
 
 To the Monarchians, or Patripassians, he was the true 
 God inhabiting the body of Jesus, the divine nature oc- 
 cupying the place and performing the functions of the 
 human soul— the man Christ was the Son of God, and 
 to this Son the Father of the universe so jomed him- 
 self as to be crucified and endure pangs along with the 
 Son.”{ They asserted “the true and proper Deity in 
 Christ’s person, but denied his humanity. The one 
 single person of the Godhead, the true and absolute 
 Deity, united himself with a human body, but not with 
 a rational human soul.Ӥ } 
 
 Nestorius and his followers sought to answer the 
 question by assuming the fact that there were in Ohrist 
 two natures, a proper divinity and a proper humanity, 
 but that they remained distinct and were not united in 
 one person—“in a single self-conscious personality.” 
 “Instead of a blending of the two natures into only one 
 self, the Nestorian scheme places two selves side by 
 side, and allows only a moral and sympathetic union 
 between them. The result is, that the acts of each 
 nature derive no character from the qualities of the 
 
 * Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., vol. i., p. 343. 
 
 + Shedd’s Christian Doctrine, vol. i., p. 393. 
 t Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., vol. i., p. 182. 
 
 § Shedd’s Christian Doctrine, vol. i., p. 394. 
 
276 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 other.”* The problem to be solved was whether all 
 the statements in the New Testament, and all the acts 
 of the Redeemer, could be explained on this supposi- 
 tion. 
 
 The Eutychian or the Monophysite Christology ex- 
 plained, or tried to explain, the statements in the New 
 Testament, and the facts in the life of the Redeemer, on 
 another and an opposite supposition, in answer to the 
 question “what shall be done with Jesus.” That sys- 
 tem asserts the unity of self-consciousness in the person 
 of Christ, but loses the duality of the two natures. Eu- 
 tyches taught that in the incarnation the human nature 
 was transmuted into the divine, so that the resultant 
 was one person and one nature. For this reason the 
 Eutychians held that it was accurate and proper to say 
 that “ God suffered.”+ 
 
 Sabellius sought to answer the question by supposing 
 that there was but one “person” in the divine nature; 
 that, according to the different manifestations, as Cre- 
 ator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, that one person was desig- 
 nated by different names, implying a distinction not in 
 nattre, but in the manifestation that there was a “cer- 
 tain energy put forth by the supreme parent, or a cer- 
 tain portion of the divine nature being separated from 
 it, because united with the Son, or the man Christ; that 
 there was but one divine person; that while there was 
 a real difference between the Father, Son, and Holy 
 Ghost, that difference was neither an essential nor a 
 personal.one; the divine three were not three distinct 
 persons, but three portions of the divine nature, all de- 
 pending on God; and that that portion which united 
 with the man Christ, in order to redeem men, is the 
 
 * Shedd’s Christian Doctrine, vol. i., p. 897. 
 + Ibid., vol. i., p. 897. 
 
. EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 277 
 
 Son,” and that by this theory all that there was in the 
 person and work of Christ can be explained.* 
 
 Paul of Samosata and his followers—the Paulians— 
 supposed that they could explain the mysteries of the 
 person of Christ on the theory that the Son and the 
 Holy Ghost exist in God as reason and the operative 
 power do in man; that Christ was born a mere man, 
 but that the reason or wisdom of the Father descended 
 into him, and enabled him to teach and to work mira- 
 cles; and that, on this account, it was proper to say 
 that Christ was God, though not in the proper sense of 
 the word.t 
 
 Julian, the emperor, greatly perplexed and embar- 
 rassed in regard to Jesus, and the progress which his 
 religion had made in the empire, attempted to solve all 
 the mysteries in regard to him by saying that “Jesus, 
 having persuaded a few among you [Galileans, as he 
 contemptuously called the Christians], and those of the 
 worst of men, has now been celebrated about three 
 hundred years, having done nothing in his lifetime 
 worthy of fame—épvoy dvdev daxoije a&ov—unless any one 
 thinks it a very great work to heal lame and blind peo- 
 ple, and exorcise demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaida 
 and Bethany.” 
 
 Socinus sought an explanation by assuming that 
 Christ was a mere man, but a good man; Dr. Priestley 
 
 * See Mosheim, Eccl. Hist., vol. i., p. 241, 2. There is some confu- 
 sion in the statement of Mosheim on this subject, and there has been 
 some doubt whether he has given the correct account of the senti- . 
 ments of Sabellius. His views are examined in a long note by Dr. 
 Murdock. Ihave endeavored, from the text and the note, to state, as 
 clearly as possible, what were probably the views of Sabellius. 
 
 + Ibid., vol. ii., p. 244. 
 
 t Lardner’s Works, vol. vii., p. 628, ed. London, 1838. 
 
278 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 in the idea that he was a mere man “naturally as falli- 
 ble and peccable as any other man.” 
 
 Chubb supposed that he could explain all by the fol- 
 lowing statement: “In Christ we have an example of 
 a quiet and peaceable spirit; of a becoming modesty 
 and sobriety ; just, honest, upright, sincere; and, above 
 all, of a most gracious and benevolent temper and be- 
 havior. One who did no wrong, no injury to any man; 
 in whose mouth was no guile; who went about doing 
 good, not only by his ministry, but also in curing all 
 manner of diseases among the people. His life was a 
 beautiful picture of human nature in its native purity 
 and simplicity, and showed at once what excellent crea- 
 tures men would be when under the influence and 
 power of the Gospel which he preached unto them.’”* 
 
 The solution by Rousseau is so well known that it is 
 necessary only to refer to it. “Is it possible,” says he, 
 “that the sacred personage whose history it [the Bible] 
 contains should be himself a mere man? What sweet- 
 ness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting 
 eracefulness in his instructions! What sublimity in his 
 maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! 
 What presence of mind, what subtlety, what fitness in 
 his replies! How great the command over his pas- 
 sions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who 
 could so live and so die, without weakness and without 
 ostentation? The death of Socrates, peacefully philoso- 
 phizing among his friends, appears the most agreeable 
 that one could wish; that of Jesus, expiring in agonies, 
 abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the 
 most horrible that one could fear. Socrates, indeed, in 
 receiving the cup of poison, blessed the weeping execu- 
 
 * True Gospel of Jesus Christ, sec. viii., p. 55, 56, quoted by. Dr. 
 Schaff, Person of Christ, p. 282, 283. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 279 
 
 tioner who administered it; but Jesus, amidst excruci- 
 ating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. 
 Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a 
 sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God.’* 
 Strauss assumed that Jesus was a real personage— 
 that there was such a living Teacher, but that the 
 things ascribed to him are in the main mythical; that 
 is, that certain ideas and conceptions have been made 
 to have the appearance of a living form and reality by 
 being represented as in connection with him, or as acted 
 out in his life. The problem was, assuming that there 
 was such a real personage, to explain how those ideas 
 could be represented as embodied in his life, or what 
 those ideas would be if represented as acted out by a 
 living man. “This Christ,” says he, “as far as he is in- 
 separable from the highest style of religion, is héstoric- 
 al, not mythical ; is an individual, not a mere symbol. 
 To the historical person of Christ belongs all in his life 
 that exhibits his religious perfection, his discourses, his 
 moral action, and his passion. He remains the highest 
 model of religion within the reach of our thought, and 
 no perfect piety is possible without his presence in the 
 heart. As little as humanity will ever be without re- 
 ligion, as little will it be without Christ; for to have 
 religion without Christ would be as absurd as to enjoy 
 poetry without regard to Homer or Shakspeare.”t 
 Renan takes a different view, and aims to explain his 
 life on different principles. ‘I will assume,’ is the idea 
 —not his exact language—‘ the main facts about him, 
 as stated by the Evangelists, especially in the Fourth 
 Gospel, to be true, and I will write his life anew—that 
 * Emile ou de l’Education, lect. iv., quoted at length in Dr. 
 
 Schaff’s Person of Christ, p. 286-296. 
 + Quoted by Dr. Schaff, Person of Christ, p. 340, 341. 
 
280 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 life as seen especially by a contemplation of the scenes 
 where he lived and died. I will make that life as at- 
 tractive as possible by all the charms of fancy, romance, 
 poetry. I will go and visit the place where he was 
 born, the place where he was trained, the places where 
 he dwelt, and there, studying his character, inquiring 
 how it was developed at that time and in those scenes 
 —the influences that bore on his childhood, his youth, 
 and his riper years—the successive ideas which he cher- 
 ished in regard to his own powers, and the unconscious 
 illusions under which he was brought in regard to him- 
 self, and the plans which he formed under those illu- 
 sions, I will set forth his life as the most beautiful and 
 attractive that the world has seen. I will see what I 
 can do with this ‘young man of profound originality’ 
 (p. 125); of ‘ perfect idealism’ (p. 140); ‘ who developed 
 his own powers the more he believed on himself’ (p. 
 148); this young man of extraordinary genius, awak- 
 ing slowly to the consciousness of his great powers; 
 forming his plans, under an innocent enthusiasm, on 
 ‘false views, as Columbus and Newton did (p. 138), 
 but deeply and permanently affecting the world,’ “In 
 the first rank,” says he, “of the grand family of the 
 true sons of God, we must place Jesus. Jesus had no 
 visions; God does not speak to him from without; God 
 is in him; he feels that he is with God, and he draws 
 from his heart what he says of his Father. He lives in 
 the bosom of God by uninterrupted communication ; he 
 does not see him, but he understands him without need 
 of thunder and the burning bush like Moses, of a reveal- 
 ing tempest like Job, of an oracle like the old Greek 
 sages, of a familiar genius like Socrates, or of an angel 
 Gabriel like Mohammed. He believes that he is in di- 
 rect communication with God; he believes himself the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 281 
 
 Son of God. The highest consciowsness of God which 
 ever existed in the breast of humanity was that of 
 Jesus.” “Christ, for the first time, gave utterance to 
 the idea upon which shall rest the edifice of the ever- 
 lasting religion. He founded the pure worship—of no 
 age—of no clime—which shall be that of all lofty souls 
 to the end of time. If other planets have inhabitants 
 endowed with reason and morality, their religion can 
 not be different from that which Jesus proclaimed at 
 Jacob’s well. The words of Jesus were a gleam in a 
 thick night; it has taken eighteen hundred years for 
 the eyes of humanity to learn to abide by it. But the 
 gleam shall become the full day; and after the passing 
 through all the circles of error, humanity will return to 
 these words, as to the immortal expression of its faith 
 and its hopes.” “Repose now in thy glory, noble 
 founder! Thy work is finished; thy divinity is estab- 
 lished. Fear no more to see the edifice of thy labors 
 fall by any fault. Henceforth, beyond the range of 
 frailty, thou shalt witness, from the heights of divine 
 peace, the infinite results of thy acts. For thousands 
 of years the world will defend thee. Banner of our 
 contests, thou shalt be the standard about which the 
 hottest battle will be given. A thousand times more 
 alive, a thousand times more beloved since thy death 
 than during thy passage here below, thou shalt become 
 the corner-stone of humanity so entirely, that to tear 
 thy name from this would be to rend it from its founda- 
 tions. Complete conqueror of death, take possession 
 of thy kingdom, whither shall follow thee, by the 
 royal road which thou hast traced, ages of worshipers.” 
 ‘Whatever may be the surprises of the future, Jesus 
 will never be surpassed. His worship will grow young 
 without ceasing ; his legend will call forth tears without 
 
282 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 end; his sufferings*will melt the noblest hearts; all 
 ages will proclaim that, among the sons of men, there 
 is none born greater than Jesus.”* 
 
 Nothing has been, also, more perplexing in secular 
 history than the question what place shall be assigned 
 to Jesus and his religion. Mr. Gibbon, as I have re- 
 marked in a former Lecture, found it indispensable to 
 dispose of this question, and he gave the best efforts of 
 his mind to it. The problem with him was how to ac- 
 count for the spread and the power of his religion on 
 the supposition that it was an imposture and an illu- 
 sion. The course of his history would have flowed 
 much more freely, and the task of the great historian 
 would have been greatly lightened, if it had not been 
 for the difficulties involved in the solution of this 
 question. 
 
 To the world now—to Rationalists; to Socinians; to 
 Unitarians; to skeptics; to worldly men; to the West- 
 minster Review; to philosophers, is there any one sub- 
 ject more difficult than that involved in the question 
 of Pilate, “What shall be done with Jesus?” Ages 
 have passed away since he lived, and now the question 
 is revived with a power which it has never had before, 
 and more learfing is employed on the question than 
 there has been at any former period of the world. At 
 his birth it was said of him, “ Behold, this child is set 
 for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for 
 a sign which shall be spoken against; that the thoughts 
 of many hearts may be revealed” (Luke, ii., 34, 35). This 
 was true in his own age; it is true in history; it is true 
 in our own times; it bids fair to be true to the end of 
 the world. 
 
 The inquiry as it pertains to us in this course of Lee- 
 
 * Life of Jesus. New York, 1864, p. 50, 51, 104, 215, 351, 376. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 283 
 
 tures, with reference to the argument for the truth of 
 his religion, especially in the nineteenth century—after 
 his character has been before the world for eighteen 
 hundred years—is, whether that character furnishes ev- 
 idence that he was from God, and that his religion is 
 divine, or whether all that there was in his character 
 can be explained on the supposition that his claims 
 were false, and that his religion is an imposture. 
 
 The argument now divides itself into two parts: 
 that derived from his personal character, and that de- 
 rived from his incarnation. 
 
 -I, THAT DERIVED FROM HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER, 
 
 (1.) The foundation of this argument is, that the 
 character of Jesus, as drawn by the Evangelists, is PER- 
 FECT. If that were denied, and as far as it was denied, 
 the argument would fail. 
 
 It might, at this stage of the argument, almost be 
 assumed that that character is perfect. It has been 
 admitted by all, or so nearly by all, that as in cer- 
 tain mathematical propositions small fractions may be 
 left out of the account as not affecting the result, so 
 here the number of those who have called the perfec- 
 tion of that character in question has been so small, 
 and the points have been so unimportant, if not inap- 
 preciable or doubtful, that these need not be taken into 
 the account. The ancients did not call the perfection 
 of his character in question? Neither Celsus, Porphyry, 
 nor Julian expressed a doubt on the subject. The ar- 
 gument which they urged was not based on a denial 
 of the perfection of Jesus; it was founded on the al- 
 leged fact that the character of others—of Socrates, 
 and of Apollonius of Tyana—were not less perfect. 
 
 It is only in modern times that the perfection of that 
 
284 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 character has been called in question, and the fact that 
 it has been done, and the manner in which it has been 
 done, have shocked the Christian world. 
 
 Dr. Priestley, indeed, asserted that “ Christ was nat- 
 urally as fallible and peccable as any other man,” but 
 he did not venture to suggest that his character, in fact, 
 was not actually perfect, or that he was in any sense a 
 sinner, though he would not have been restrained from 
 doing it if there had been any thing in his conduct or 
 character to which he could have referred as proof—for 
 he was not restrained from saying that he had found 
 defects in the reasoning of the apostle Paul. It was re- 
 served for others to take the additional bold step of 
 specifying what they regard as defects in the character 
 of the Saviour. 
 
 The “ acute and candid” author of the work on “The 
 Soul” and the “ Phases of Faith”* understood very well 
 that “a perfect type of character is the essence of a 
 practical religion,” and that, if the Christian type was 
 perfect, it would be hopeless to set up a new religion 
 beside it. Accordingly, it became necessary to show 
 that there were imperfections in the character of Christ, 
 and the imperfections which he specifies are two in 
 number. The first is the exhibition of indignation 
 against the hypocritical and soul-murdering tyranny of 
 the Pharisees; the second is the absence of mirth, and 
 of laughter as its natural and genial manifestation.”+ 
 This is all. 
 
 Strauss also denies the sinlessness of Jesus. This, 
 however, is done not so much from the specification of 
 any actual facts, as on the @ priori philosophical argu- 
 ment of the impossibility of sinlessness, or the panthe- 
 
 * Mr. Newman. 
 + Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 139, 140. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 285 
 
 istic notion of the inseparableness of sin from all finite 
 existence. The only exegetical proof that he urges is 
 the declaration of the Savior (Matt., xix., 17), “There 
 is none good but one, that is God.”* 
 
 A French writer—F. Pecaut—(Ze Christ et la Con- 
 science, Paris, 1859) likewise denies the sinlessness of 
 Jesus. He refers to the following facts as evidences of 
 imperfection: the conduct of Jesus toward his mother 
 in his twelfth year; his rebuke administered to her at 
 the wedding feast of Cana; his expulsion of the traftick- 
 ers from the Temple; his cursing of the unfruitful fig- 
 tree; the destruction of the herd of swine; his bitter 
 invectives against the Pharisees; and his own rejection 
 of the attribute “good” in the dialogue with the rich 
 youth.t 
 
 Such objections as these it would not be difficult to 
 answer, and it will be assumed here, in accordance with 
 what may be regarded, with these slight exceptions, as 
 the universal judgment of mankind, that the character 
 of the Savior was perfect. If this is admitted, it will 
 be admitted, also, with exceptions not more numerous, 
 or that will not more vary the judgment of mankind, 
 that the character stands alone. It would be as easy 
 to dispose of the few cases—not more than two or 
 three in number—that have been set up as being also 
 perfect, as Socrates and Apollonius, for example, as it is 
 to dispose of the specified objections in regard to the 
 perfection of the Savior. The general judgment of 
 mankind on the subject of human perfection is un- 
 _ doubtedly in accordance with the expressed opinion of 
 Cicero: “In whom truly there shall be absolute per- 
 fection we have not as yet seen; we have seen no one 
 perfect; it has only been expounded by philosophers 
 
 * Schaff, Person of Jesus, p. 209. + Lbid. 
 
286 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 what such a one would be, if there should be such a 
 one.””* | 
 
 _ (2.) To see the full bearing on the argument of the 
 remark now made, it is necessary to keep in mind the 
 fact that that character has been regarded as equally 
 perfect in all those eighteen centuries which have 
 elapsed since his appearing; among all nations where 
 he has been made known; by all ranks and conditions 
 of society. This is an ordeal through which a charac- 
 ter claimed to be perfect must necessarily pass. It is 
 not that the character is regarded as perfect in one age, 
 or among those of a certain rank or condition in life, 
 but that it commends itself to those of every age and 
 of every condition, and that when examined in view of 
 all the phases of opinion which exist among men, and 
 of all the standards of perfection which are set up, in 
 reference to what it would be if reproduced in a partic- 
 ular age and among a particular class, it is still found 
 to be without a flaw. For, abstractly, there are great 
 varieties of opinion among men about what is. perfect 
 in character; there are different standards of morality ; 
 there are different views in philosophy; there are dif- 
 ferent customs and opinions; there are different things 
 aimed at in life; there are different attempts to draw 
 a perfect character. That which would seem to be per- 
 fect in one age, and according to the mode of judging 
 in that age, might be seen to be very far from being 
 perfect when men should have more enlarged and cor- 
 rect views of what constitutes perfection; and that 
 which would come up to the demands of that more ad- 
 vanced age might still show defects in an age still more 
 
 * In quo vero erit perfecta sapientia quem adhuce nos quidem vidi- 
 mus neminem; sed philosophorum sententiis, qualis futurus sit, si 
 modo aliquando fuerit, exponitur.—Tusc. Queest., lib. ii., cap. 22. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 287 
 
 advanced, and might fail to meet the general judgment 
 of mankind as to a claim of absolute sinlessness. 
 
 The claim set up for the Savior, and universally con- 
 ceded, with the few exceptions which I have noticed, is 
 that it commends itself equally to every age; to every 
 class of persons; to the learned and the unlearned; to 
 sages, to philosophers, and to those in humble life—to 
 all as absolutely free from sin. On this fact my argu- 
 ment now is based.* 
 
 (3.) Assuming now that the character of Christ is 
 perfect or sinless, it will be proper, in order to see the 
 force of the argument, to consider the attempts which 
 have been made to draw or describe a perfect char- 
 acter. 
 
 One of two things is true in regard to the character 
 of Christ, as exhibited in the New Testament :—it was 
 either teal, or it was the work of the Evangelists—a 
 work of fiction. 
 
 If it was real, then the question is settled; for if he 
 was perfect and sinless, then he was what he claimed to 
 be, and was the Son of God sent down from heaven— 
 for he undoubtedly claimed this. 
 
 If it was the work of the Evangelists, then we have 
 to show how it was that such plain men as they were, 
 and very imperfect men themselves, should have been 
 able to set before the world a perfect imaginary charac- 
 ter; how four or more men of such rank as they were 
 
 * The following works may be referred to on the general sub- 
 ject of the character of the Savior: Dr. Ullmann, Die Sundlosigkeit 
 Jesu; Dr. Horace Bushnell, The Character of Jesus; John Young, 
 The Christ of History; Z. P. Lange, Leben Jesu; Dr. Channing’s 
 Sermon on the Character of Christ, Works, vol. iv., p. 23; Lectures 
 on the Study of History, by Prof. Goldwin Smith, p. 127-167; and 
 ‘¢The Person of Christ,” by Dr. Philip Schaff. 
 
288 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 should have combined, in separate narratives, to pro- 
 duce such a character; how, moreover, they should 
 have done it, not by direct statements, but by placing 
 this imaginary person in a great variety of situations, 
 and bringing him into contact with the world for a suc- 
 cession of years, and under every possible temptation 
 to do wrong; and how they were able so to describe 
 him that he never is represented as uttering a senti- 
 ment, or manifesting a feeling, or performing an action, 
 which is not conformable to the highest standard of 
 perfection. It will be seen at once that it is a much 
 more difficult thing for fow men to present a perfect 
 character in such details than it would be for one man 
 to carry out his own individual conceptions; as it 
 would be more difficult for four sculptors to produce 
 the Apollo Belvidere, in the beauty of its form and pro- 
 portions, than it was for the one mind that conceived it 
 and executed it. » Moreover, the difficulty is to be ex- 
 plained how, on the supposition even that Christ actu- 
 ally dived, and was perfect or sinless, such men had the 
 ability so to draw his character, and so to represent 
 him, in such a variety of situations, that his character 
 should commend itself to all ages as absolutely sinless. 
 
 The simple fact in the matter, whether the character 
 was real, or whether it is the creation of the imagina- 
 tion, is that they have done what was never before 
 done, and what, even with this model before them, has 
 never since been done. 
 
 The attempts made by men to draw a perfect charac- 
 ter have been of two kinds: from real life ; and from the 
 imagination — real characters, and fictitious characters. 
 
 The former attempts have failed, because there have 
 been no perfect characters, and because it has been the 
 work of the historian to describe men as they are. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 289 
 
 Themselves imperfect men, and portrayed by imper- 
 fect men, they stand before the world as imperfect 
 men. 
 
 The design of fiction, in poetry and romance, is to de- 
 scribe men and women as they are, or human nature 
 as it is. Such works, so far as they relate to human 
 conduct, lose all their value when they fail to describe 
 human nature as it is—living men and women—acting 
 their parts on the great theatre of human life. Those 
 works come nearest to perfection, as works of art, when 
 they describe human nature most accurately. Shak- 
 speare does not describe perfect characters; it may be 
 doubted whether he ever attempted it, or designed to 
 describe one. The characters in novels, as the charac- 
 ters in history, are not perfect characters; and if any 
 one has attempted to draw such a character, it is easy 
 at once to see, whatever else it may be, how unlike it is 
 to the character of Jesus Christ. Where zs there a 
 character, in fiction, that can be held up to all the world 
 in all ages; that can represent man in all relations and 
 circumstances; that can be a sinless model in conduct 
 alike toward God and toward men; that can be a model 
 for kings and princes, sages and philosophers, the hum- 
 ble, the unlearned, the lowly, the down-trodden—in pros- 
 perity and in adversity; in joy and in sorrow; in be- 
 nevolence, in purity, in gentleness, in the love of truth, 
 in the love of justice; in childhood, in youth, and in 
 middle age; under obloquy and reproach; in dealing 
 with crafty and unprincipled men; in abandonment and 
 persecution; in the severest form of death, and under 
 all that could shake the firmness of virtue—where is 
 there, where has there been, such a character, in reality 
 or in fiction, except in the person of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 I do not affirm that it has never been attempted. We 
 
 N 
 * 
 
290 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 have seen that there has been, in two or more instances, 
 a claim set-up to perfection of character that would be 
 a set-off against the claim in favor of Jesus Christ. I 
 do not deny that writers of fiction have designed to 
 draw a perfect character, nor that they have supposed 
 that they have done it—just as artists have designed to 
 present a perfect human form in the Apollo and the Ve- 
 nus de Medici, and perfect beauty in the Madonna. I 
 do not deny that the attempt has been made—where, in 
 fact, it has most signally failed—in the description of 
 the gods appearing in human form, a fact which we 
 shall see in another part of this Lecture bears vitally 
 on the argument before us. 
 
 (4.) But let us look a moment at the difficulties which 
 have attended such an undertaking. 
 
 (2) First, then, there has been no living model from 
 which men asatl draw in forming such a: character; 
 no one that would be recognized universally as con- 
 stituting such a model. 
 
 (6) There has been no agreement among men as to 
 what would be such a standard of character. The idea 
 would differ in different ages and among different na- 
 tions. A Hebrew would have set up one standard; an 
 Egyptian another; a Greek another; a Roman another; 
 a Persian another; an inhabitant of China now has one 
 ideal standard, a Hindoo another, a New Zealander an- 
 other.. A nobleman has one idea, a philosopher another, 
 a priest another. A Mandarin has one idea, a Brahmin 
 another, a Turkish mufti another. A Pharisee had one, 
 a Sadducee another, and one of the sect of the Essenes 
 another. Antony in Egypt and Benedict in: Italy, 
 founders of the monastic system, one, Ignatius Loyola 
 and Xavier another. A Catholic priest has one idea, a 
 Protestant minister of religion another. A peasant of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 291 
 
 Galilee “could hardly be supposed to have the same 
 standard which would be approved in Corinth. 
 
 (c) The ideas of morality and manners change in dif- 
 ferent ages. There are very low views of morality in 
 one age, and very stringent ones in another; there are 
 things cultivated in one age which are disregarded in 
 another; there are things which in one age are consid- 
 ered to be lofty virtues, which in another age cease to 
 be considered as virtues at all. In the days of chivalry 
 and knight-errantry there were things regarded as in- 
 dispensable, as entering into character, which a change 
 of social customs has rendered at best obsolete; things, 
 too, then regarded as lofty virtues, which might now be 
 considered as, at least, of doubtful morality. The re- 
 mark of Cicero, before referred to (p. 286), may here 
 be borne in mind when speaking of a character in 
 which there would be “ perfect wisdom”—~perfecta sapi- 
 entia—he says that such a character had hitherto ex- 
 isted only in the imagination of philosophers: they had 
 described not what had been, but what would be if such 
 a character should appear. 
 
 (d) There was this special difficulty in the case, also, 
 that the work was to be done, not by one person, who 
 could carry out his own conceptions, but by several 
 persons, either acting in concert, or acting independent- 
 ly of each other. One man— Homer, Virgil, Milton, 
 Shakspeare, can easily carry out his own conceptions, 
 and secure unity and concinnity in an epic or a trage- 
 dy, however long it may be, or however many charac- 
 ters are introduced. The writer of the epic’ can place 
 his hero in a great variety of situations, and still have 
 before him the same hero, acting in conformity with his 
 character; the writer of the drama can place any vari- 
 ety of characters in different situations, and lead them 
 
292 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 forth in a great variety of action, and still can so pre- 
 serve his plan, and keep up the identity, that Hamlet, 
 and Lear, and Othello are always recognized when they 
 speak. But the case would be much more difficult 
 and complicated if it were supposed that the Iliad, 
 the Afniad, the Paradise Lost, or Hamlet, were respect- 
 ively the production of a society or combination of 
 poets. One sculptor can carry out his own concep- 
 tions, and produce symmetry, concinnity, harmony in 
 his statue; for the statue is in his mind, and he can 
 copy it as it is there combined in its proper propor- 
 tions. But suppose a company of artists to have un- 
 dertaken to execute the statue of Minerva or the Apol- 
 lo, it 1s easy to see-how the matter would be compli- 
 cated, and how improbable it would have been that 
 statues with such beauties of proportion and form 
 would ever have existed. 
 
 In the case of the life of the Savior, if no such being 
 ever existed, then the difficulty is in seeing how four, 
 or five, or more persons could combine to form such an 
 idea, and how they could combine in carrying out the 
 conception. If he did really exist, then the difficulty 
 would be to see how four, or five, or more persons could 
 so write his life, with or without concert, as to produce 
 separate and independent narratives, and yet preserve 
 the unity of the idea through the whole. 
 
 (ec) It is to be borne in mind, also, that the plan was, 
 as appears, not to represent him as an abstraction, or 
 not to present the abstract conception of a perfect man, 
 but to place him in an almost endless variety of situa- 
 tions, and to show how he acted there; with no com- 
 ment on his conduct with reference to the question 
 whether it was consistent or not, and manifestly with 
 no anxiety on that point; without even saying that he 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 293 
 
 was perfect—for that was not affirmed by the Evangel- 
 ists themselves, but was reserved for later writers*— 
 but to describe him as acting, leaving the world to 
 judge from his actions whether he was a perfect being. 
 Accordingly, he appears before us in all the variety of 
 circumstances in which a human being can ordinarily 
 be placed; in such an endless diversity that the char- 
 acter, whatever it was, could not but be developed. He 
 makes a thousand speeches; he performs a thousand 
 actions; he meets with thousands of people; he is 
 placed in situations of temptation and of provocation ;_ 
 he is among friends and among foes; he is with the 
 wicked and the good;-he is with the sick and the dy- 
 ing; he addresses great multitudes in public; he warns 
 and denounces the wicked, and he pours consolation 
 into the hearts of those that weep in private. 
 
 To see the difficulty, and the nature of the argument, 
 let us return for a moment to the supposition already 
 suggested. The statue of Minerva; the Apollo Belvi- 
 dere; the Venus de Medici, and the still more compli- 
 cated Laocoon, are respectively the work of one artist. 
 One mind formed the conception; one hand carried out 
 the conception; one idea runs through the entire work 
 as a work of art. 
 
 But suppose that any one of these, either the most 
 simple or the most complicated, were the work of dif- 
 ferent men—the production of a society of artists, and 
 not of an individual, either with or without a common 
 agreement or understanding. Suppose it be left to one 
 man to form the head; to a second the hand; to a third. 
 the foot; to a fourth the body, each according to his 
 different ideas of beauty. Or suppose, in one case, that 
 it was left to independent workmen to carry out an 
 
 * 1 ‘Pet.; il.,-22';-Heb., vil., 263 11.,-103-v.,.9. 
 
294 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 idea of perfection already agreed upon, and to be pro- 
 duced by their joint labors; suppose, in another case, 
 that four men should undertake, without a concerted 
 idea, to form independently, by working on different 
 parts of the statue, the image of a perfect man. 
 
 And yet this would present but a small part of the diffi- 
 culty in drawing such a character as that of the Savior 
 —perfect as a man; perfect and complete as the incar-_ 
 nate Deity. For there is a block of marble to be mould- 
 ed at will. It is cold; passive; subject wholly to the 
 control of the chisel. It has no will; no passion; no 
 feeling ; no character. It has no complications of fancy, 
 intellect, affections. You can make it what you please; 
 and when any part is made, it remains the same. The 
 idea rises before you with nothing to disturb you, and 
 when complete, there it stands as you intended it 
 should. Here there is will, and feeling, and purpose, 
 and mind, and heart, and action, all vas and oo 
 producing endless complications. 
 
 (5.) Assuming, then, that it has been Aone the ques- 
 tion is, How is this to be accounted for or explained? 
 
 (a) It is not a work of fiction. It bears all the marks 
 of real life. The life of Christ is not a fiction. Christ 
 is a real historical personage—as real as Cesar or Alex- 
 ander. You can make nothing of history; of nations; 
 of opinions; of philosophy; of the world; of any thing 
 in the past, if this is denied. All history is connect- 
 ed with that life; all history, for eighteen hundred 
 years at least, turns on that life. The fact that he 
 lived, and founded the Christian religion, is recognized 
 by Josephus, by Tacitus, by Pliny. It is not denied 
 by Celsus, by Porphyry, by Julian, as it would have 
 been if it could have been done. It is not denied by 
 Mr. Gibbon, but is assumed in his labored argument ey- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 295 
 
 ery where. It is not denied by Strauss; it is not de- 
 nied by Renan. . 
 
 (0) It is not a work of genius. Genius has never 
 drawn such a character; genius has never drawn a per- 
 fect character at all. Besides, his biographers, the fish- 
 ermen of Galilee, were no¢ remarkable for genius, un- 
 less the fact of portraying the life of Chrst proves that 
 they were. They did nothing else remarkable. They 
 wrote no poetry. They promulgated no new system 
 of philosophy. They composed no works of fiction, 
 unless this is one. They wrote no dramas to make 
 them immortal, as Sophocles, Terence, and Eschylus 
 did. They gave the world no inventions in the arts. 
 They made no discoveries in science. They suggested 
 no improvements in architecture; in ship-building; in 
 the implements of agriculture; even in their own em- 
 ployment—in the methods of fishing. They would have 
 lived and died unknown—all of them—forgotten just as 
 soon as they had died, if it had not been for their life 
 of Christ. Not a stone would have marked their graves; 
 not one of them would have-been heard of a hundred 
 years after their death. Nothing else that they did 
 would have made a ripple on the great flowing stream 
 of the world’s events. Fishermen are not commonly 
 immortal. 
 
 (c) Moreover, if it were supposed that they under- 
 took, by combination and concert, to engage in such a 
 work as this, we should certainly not have had this life. 
 We should either have had a character intensely and 
 thoroughly Jewish—which the character of Jesus is not 
 —with Jewish conceptions; a narrow, bigoted, Jewish 
 Messiah; a prince; a conqueror; a deliverer; a Judas 
 - Maccabeeus; a restorer of the pomp and pride of the an- 
 cient monarchy, in accordance with the Jewish concep- 
 
296 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tions of the Messiah, or we should have had a biog- 
 raphy full of trifles and small conceits; of foolish mar- 
 vels; of improbable stories —a biography that might 
 have rivaled the Arabian Nights’ Entertaimments, such 
 as the writers of the Jewish Talmud would have been 
 likely to produce. We never should have had the Life 
 of Jesus of Nazareth as we have it now in the New 
 Testament. 
 
 (d) It is to be remarked, also, that in thus drawing 
 the perfect character of Christ, the Evangelists, or the 
 disciples who followed him, did not always themselves 
 see that his character was perfect, or that he was always 
 acting in the wisest manner. On that point they often 
 had doubts; but they recorded the facts as they occur- 
 red, and time has shown that his conduct was perfect 
 and wise. Thus, on one occasion, they said to him, when 
 he proposed to go to Bethany, where Lazarus was, 
 “‘ Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and go- 
 est thou thither again ?” (John, xi., 8). On another occa- 
 sion, when he announced to his disciples that he must 
 go up to Jerusalem and die, it is said, ““ Then Peter took 
 him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from 
 thee, Lord ; this shall not be done unto thee” (Matt., xvi., 
 22), 
 
 The argument which I have thus far, in this Lecture, 
 submitted to you, relates to the perfect character of 
 Christ—the fact that he had such a character, and that 
 it has been so drawn by the Evangelists, demonstrating 
 that he was from God. That he had such a character 
 proves that he was from God, for he claimed that he 
 was; whether his character was real or whether it was 
 imaginary, it was above the power of such men to draw 
 and describe it. The supposition that it was real, and 
 
 - 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 297 
 
 that they were under a supernatural influence in de- 
 scribing it, explains all. 
 
 Il. The other form of the argument which I proposed 
 to submit to you IS THAT DERIVED FROM HIS INCAR- 
 NATION. 
 
 I have occupied so much of the time on the former 
 part of the subject, that what remains must now be 
 presented in few words. 
 
 (1.) There has been a general belief or impression 
 among men that an incarnation of the Deity is possible, 
 and would occur. This idea or impression has been so 
 prevalent as to show that somehow the idea does not 
 shock men, or strike them as absurd. At first view it 
 would seem that it would be likely to do this. So far 
 exalted must God be above men; so unlike men must 
 he be; so strange would seem to be the fact that two 
 beings, wholly unlike and distinct, should be combined 
 in one; so impossible is it to explain the mode in which 
 this could be done, that it might be presumed that this 
 would never occur to the mind as possible; that, how- — 
 ever exalted one being or one class of beings might be 
 above another, the extremes could be combined in one; 
 that the highest intellect in the universe—God, could 
 be united permanently with the lowest—man. It is to 
 be admitted at once that it requires the highest exer- 
 cise of faith to believe that this could be so. Yet some- 
 how the belief that the gods do come down in the forms 
 of men has been so common that the idea does not 
 startle or amaze mankind. When, at Lystra, Paul heal- 
 ed a cripple, and the people lifted up their voices and 
 said of him and Barnabas, “The gods are come down 
 to us in the likeness of men” (Acts, xiv., 11), they ex- 
 pressed only what has been in accordance with a gen- 
 eral belief. They were not shocked; they hastened to 
 
 N 2 
 
298 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 bring oxen and garlands, that they might render them 
 appropriate homage as gods. 
 
 This general faith of mankind in the doctrine of an 
 incarnation of the Deity has been manifested in every 
 way possible. It has been incorporated into legends, 
 myths, and fables. It has been embalmed in tradition. 
 It has been expressed in the highest conceptions of 
 poetry. It has been made the foundation of epics and 
 tragedies. It has suggested the noblest conceptions of 
 sculpture. It has been uttered in the profoundest say- 
 ings of philosophy. It has been laid at the foundation 
 of most of the religions of the world, for there is scarce- 
 ly one form of religion among men in which some trace 
 of the conception can not be found. 
 
 This universal belief in the doctrine of an incarna- 
 tion of the Deity may be referred to as one among 
 a thousand arrangements in our nature, and in the 
 forms of belief among men, shadowing the truth; pre- 
 paring men to expect and to receive the truth—ar- 
 rangements in our nature which can be explained only 
 on the supposition that there 7s truth of which this 
 belief is the shadow, and that there is to be revelation 
 for which this faith was to prepare the way. It may 
 be doubted whether the revelation of an incarnation of 
 God would not have so shocked mankind that it would 
 at once have been rejected as impossible if the minds 
 of men had not been prepared for its reception by this 
 universal faith in'an incarnation. At all events, this 
 universal belief in what would seem so improbable, 
 proves that the idea is no¢ repugnant to the’ human 
 mind. ‘The doctrine of an incarnation of the Deity is 
 not to be dislodged from the mind of man, It is not to 
 be driven from it by argument. He does not argue 
 safely, nor will he argue with permanent success, who 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 299 
 
 argues against the universal convictions of men on any 
 subject. The faith will find a substance corresponding 
 to it; the belief is to be satisfied by some revelation in 
 accordance with it; and the only question is whether 
 that is found in Christianity, or whether it is to be in 
 some form of heathenism already existing, or whether 
 it remains to be met in some hitherto undeveloped form 
 of religion. 
 
 (2.) The attempt has been made in almost_all coun- 
 tries to describe the actions of an incarnate God, or to 
 tell what he would be. It may be said that the highest 
 efforts of genius and philosophy have been exhausted on 
 the attempt. The world has no higher genius to be 
 employed on any subject than has been employed on 
 this. Plato went to the utmost limit of his powers in 
 describing the Trinity of his conception—it may be said 
 to the utmost limit of the powers of man ,; for who can 
 bring to the subject a mind more richly endowed than 
 his? Homer exhausted the powers of poetry in de- 
 scribing the gods as they came down to mingle in the 
 strifes of battle. The Greeks, in sculpture, accomplish- 
 ed all that, in this respect, the human mind could be 
 expected to do. 
 
 In a previous part of these Lectures I have remarked 
 that the highest powers of the human mind have been 
 employed on the subject of religion, in endeavoring to 
 ascertain the truth about God; the immortality of the 
 soul; the plan of recovery for lost men; and the reali- 
 ties of the future world. I remarked, in substance, that 
 it seemed not improper that there should be one na- 
 tional mind created and endowed as if with special ref- 
 erence to such inquiries; one people with whom the solu- 
 tion of the question whether man could accomplish with- 
 out a revelation all that the race needs, could be safely 
 
300 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 intrusted. I remarked that such a mind was found em- 
 inently in the Greek mind, and that the experiment had 
 been fairly made there. In subtlety; in depth; in 
 acuteness; in the power of analysis; in keenness of pen- 
 etration; in metaphysical acuteness ; and in the posses- 
 sion of a language unrivaled in its adaptation to such 
 inquiries, I remarked that it seemed as if God had pre- 
 pared that mind especially for such inquiries; that the 
 question as to what man could do by his unaided pow- 
 ers might be regarded as fairly determined there; that 
 the result was a demonstration that man was unequal 
 to the task of solving those great. questions, and that a 
 revelation was indispensable for the race. 
 
 I call your attention now to the fact that God seems 
 to have, in like manner, created and endowed another 
 national mind with special reference to the limitations 
 of the human powers on the subject of an incarnation 
 of the Deity. Irefer to the Hindoo mind. 
 
 The human race, in modern times, has been divided 
 into certain classes, founded on certain “types” or pe- 
 culiarities from the anatomical structure, complexion, 
 or form, as the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the Ethio- 
 pian, the American “types.” A classification not less 
 remarkable, not bounded by the same limits, might 
 perhaps be made from the mental characteristics of 
 men, and it might be found that these are sufficiently 
 marked to constitute a distinction as real among the 
 people of the earth. The classes of mind most distin- 
 guished might be arranged in the following order: The 
 Greek mind; the Teutonic mind; the Arabic mind; 
 the Hindoo mind—unless the order of the last two 
 should be reversed, and the Hindoo mind be assigned 
 a place nearer the Greek. In acuteness; in subtlety ; 
 in the power of discrimination; in an adaptation to 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 301 
 
 mental and mathematical pursuits; in poetry, the Hin- 
 doo mind, commonly supposed to belong to the classes 
 of inferior mind in the world, has its appropriate place, 
 as endowed by nature, with the other three classes 
 which I have mentioned, and has exerted an influence 
 on mankind perhaps scarcely less limited than the oth- 
 ers that I have specified. 
 
 I have said that the Greek mind seemed to have been 
 created almost with the design to show what the hu- 
 man intellect, unaided, could do in finding out God and 
 the truths of religion, and, by its failure in the inquiry, 
 to show the necessity of revelation. In like manner, I 
 now observe that the Hindoo mind seems to have been 
 made to show what man could learn by nature about 
 the Trinity and the Incarnation, or what the doctrine of 
 the Trinity and the Incarnation would become if in- 
 trusted to such a class of mind. For the Hindoo mind 
 
 ‘has been devoted to the inquiry. Its utmost powers 
 have been exhausted on the subject. The representa- 
 tion of the Trinity and the Incarnation has constituted 
 the very essence of its theology. The system of relig- 
 ion there is perhaps the most perfect system in the 
 world of a theoretical religion carried out into minute 
 details under the power of acute and penetrating 
 genius. 
 
 What that system is, the time would not allow me to 
 describe, nor would it be necessary. By the labors of 
 Christian missionaries, it has been made familiar to the 
 world. For puerility, for extravagance, for absurdity, 
 no system ever proposed to mankind on the subject of 
 religion has ever equaled it; and as the Greek mythol- _ 
 ogy, “elegant” as it was, showed the limit of the best 
 type of the human mind on the general subject of relig- 
 ion, so the Hindoo doctrines on the Trinity and the In- 
 
302 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 carnation show the limit of the human mind when ex- 
 ercised on the problem what God would be if he should 
 become incarnate. 
 
 As we, therefore, compare the statements in the Gos- 
 pels with the writings of the Greek philosophers on the 
 general subject of religion, so we may compare the de- 
 tails of the Hindoo theology on the Trinity and the In- 
 carnation with the statements in the New Testament 
 on the life and character of the incarnate Son of God. 
 If it had been left to man to select the mind that was 
 best fitted to describe what an incarnate being would 
 be, it is probable that no one could have been selected 
 more fitted to the task than the Hindoo mind. The re- 
 sult is before the world. 
 
 (3.) What, then, are the difficulties on the subject 
 which have placed it so far above the unaided human 
 powers? Ihave, in the former part of this Lecture, ad- 
 verted to the difficulties in describing the character of 
 a perfect man, and to the fact that all efforts to do this, 
 except the attempt in the Gospels, have failed. I now 
 advert more particularly to the greater difficulties of 
 describing the actions of an incarnate being—of God in 
 human form. 
 
 (a) In considering this part of the subject, it is prop- 
 er to remark that it is undoubtedly the fact that it was 
 the design of the writers of the New Testament to de- 
 scribe such a character; that they had such a character 
 before their minds in portraying the character of Jesus ; 
 or that they undertook to write the life of one whom 
 they regarded as God in human form. 
 
 This was, beyond all question, the view of the Evan- 
 gelist John, for he begins his Gospel by saying that “In 
 the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with 
 God, and the Word was God. And the Word was made 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 303 
 
 flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the 
 glory as of the only-begotten of the Father), full of 
 grace and truth” (John,i.,1,14). The difficulty was in 
 describing the character of one who was believed to be 
 God, and who was known to be a man. 
 
 (6) If there was, as we have seen in the former part 
 of this Lecture, great and intrinsic difficulties in de- 
 scribing the character of a perfect man, there was, in 
 the case of the incarnation, this additional difficulty, 
 which would seem to be almost insuperable, of describ- 
 ing the actions of an incarnate being—of one in whom 
 the divinity and the humanity were united. We know 
 what a man will do; how he thinks, speaks, acts. But 
 how do we know what God will do—how he will think, 
 speak, act? Still more, how do we know how the di- 
 vine and the human could be so blended that the ac- 
 tions of each and of both could be represented as the 
 actions of one person? The difficulty was in putting 
 fit words into the mouth of one regarded as God, and 
 of describing what he would do as the incarnate divin- 
 ity, and at the same time of describing him as in union 
 with, or in combination with human feelings, tender- 
 ness, sympathies, compassions—one who could weep, as 
 a man, over a friend sleeping in the grave, and at the 
 same time, by a word, restore him to life,as Ged. For 
 this there was no model—no example. None of the de- 
 scriptions of the actions of the gods in the heathen 
 mythology would do for an example; none of the de- 
 scriptions in the poets could be the basis for the biog- 
 raphy of a combined human and divine person. [If it 
 was the work of fancy, it was to be mere fancy; if the 
 life had been real, there was still the difficulty of de- 
 scribing that life so that the divine and the human 
 would appear in the proper proportions ; so that in the 
 
304 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 one there would be nothing inconsistent with the other; 
 so that there would be nothing incongruous, monstrous, 
 or absurd. The difficulty was that of describing God 
 and man as one united being; acting as such; speaking 
 as such; suffering as such; dying as such—the difficul- 
 ty of describing the things pertaining to his divine na- 
 ture as naturally as those pertaining to his human na- 
 ture; the difficulty of describing this mysterious bemg 
 performing a miracle as naturally as he performed any 
 other action—making him, if I may so speak—as nat- 
 ural when he stilled the tempest on the sea, or when 
 he raised Lazarus from the grave, as when he byoke 
 the bread at the last Passover, or when, in words of 
 sympathy and love, he comforted the weeping sisters 
 of Lazarus: to preserve the individuality, the separate 
 consciousness, the expressions of will, of affection, and 
 of feeling; to describe the actions of the divinity in 
 language appropriate, and the actions of the man in 
 language appropriate; to describe such a mysterious 
 being in language as appropriate when raising the dead 
 as when conversing on ordinary topics of life; when 
 stilling a tempest on the Sea of Galilee by a word as 
 God, and when communing with the two disciples on 
 the way to Emmaus. Who can describe such a being, 
 in very varied actions in life, and in a great diversity 
 of circumstances, and yet do it so that all shall recog- 
 nize its fitness? How could this be done by unlettered 
 fishermen? How could it be done by four or more such 
 fishermen, not acting in concert, and yet drawing out 
 the details of such a life in a manner that would be 
 harmonious, and so that its concinnity would be pre- 
 served ? 
 
 (4.) It has not been done elsewhere than in the Gos- 
 pels; not in the poetry of the Greeks; not in the in- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 305 
 
 carnations of Vishnu. As far as the east is from the 
 west are all those representations from what must be 
 the character and the life of an incarnate Deity ; and as 
 it may be presumed that im the efforts of these two 
 classes of mind—the Greek and the Hindoo, the first 
 minds of earth—the power of man on that subject was 
 exhausted, it may be affirmed now that it can not be 
 done. Among the Greeks there was no bad passion of 
 men that was not represented as developed in their in- 
 carnate deities; among the Hindoos there is nothing 
 absurd, puerile, monstrous, extravagant, wild, improba- 
 ble, or even wicked, that is not represented in their in- 
 carnations of the Deity. 
 
 On the question respecting the ability of man to de- 
 scribe, in a proper manner, the actions of an incarnate 
 Deity, we are not left to conjecture, for we actually 
 have two distinct classes of biographers of Jesus—both _ 
 claiming to describe him as incarnate—that of the 
 Evangelists, and that in the “apocryphal Gospels.” 
 No writings in the world are more unlike each other 
 than these ; nothing, perhaps, could more clearly dem- 
 onstrate that there has been a supernatural guidance 
 in portraying the character of Jesus in the Evangelists 
 than a comparison of the one with the other. 
 
 One of those “Gospels” relates to the “infancy of 
 Jesus,” and the attempt has been made, assuming the - 
 fact of his incarnation or his divinity, to describe him 
 . when a boy. Of such an attempt, it has been well re- 
 marked by Dr. Bushnell (Nature and the Supernatural, 
 p- 280), “If any writer, of almost any age, will under- 
 take to describe not merely a spotless, but a superhu- 
 man or celestial childhood, not having the reality before 
 him, he must be somewhat more than human himself if 
 he does not pile together a mass of clumsy exaggera- 
 
306 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tions, and draw and overdraw till neither heaven nor 
 earth can find any verisimilitude in the picture.” 
 “These apocryphal Gospels,” it has been well said, 
 “are related to the canonical Gospels as a counterfeit 
 to the genuine coin, or as a revolting caricature to the 
 inimitable original.” According to the representation 
 in those Gospels, even dumb idols, irrational beasts, and | 
 senseless trees bow in adoration before the infant Je- 
 sus on his journey to Egypt; and after his return, when 
 yet a boy of five or seven years, he changes balls of clay 
 into flying birds for the idle amusement of his play- 
 mates, dries up a stream of water by a mere word, 
 transforms his companions into goats, raises the dead 
 to life, makes by miracle a piece of cabinet-work which 
 his father Joseph could not make, and performs all sorts 
 of miraculous cures through a magical influence which 
 proceeds from the very water in which he washed, the 
 towels which he used, and the bed on which he slept.* 
 (5.) But that in which men have failed every where 
 else has been accomplished in the Gospels. No one can 
 show that, on the supposition that Christ was divine— 
 God as well as man—there is in his recorded life, in the 
 sentiments which fell from his lips, in the actions which 
 he performed, in the feelings which he manifested, even 
 one thing inconsistent with such a supposition. That 
 he,was, as described, a perfect man, we have seen. The 
 life which he lived was that of a perfect man. The 
 death which he died was that of a perfect man. At the 
 same time, the sentiments which he uttered were such 
 as became God—those profound truths; those perfect 
 rules of morality ; those sublime doctrines; those de- 
 * The particulars, with ample illustrations, may be seen in /tud. 
 
 Hoffman's Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen, p. 140-236. See Dr. 
 Schaff’s Person of Christ, p. 81-33. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 307 
 
 scriptions of God; those representations of man; those 
 representations of the future state—the resurrection— 
 the judgment—heaven and hell. The miracles which he 
 wrought were such as God only can perform, and the 
 language which he used in healing the sick, in opening 
 the eyes of the blind, in stilling the storm, and in rais- 
 ing the dead, is as simple and appropriate as that which 
 he employed in his ordinary intercourse with his disci- 
 ples and friends. For he is described as uttering those 
 great truths as naturally and as easily as conversing on 
 the ordinary topics of life, and the description of his 
 raising the dead is a description of an act as natural 
 and easy as the most ordinary action of life. We may 
 safely challenge any one who denies the fact of the in- 
 carnation to show, on the supposition that there was an 
 incarnation, what there is in the whole of the four Gos- 
 pels that is inconsistent with such an idea, or that: 
 strikes the mind as incongruous on such a supposition.’ 
 And even with this model before us, let it be attempted 
 again, even by the most cultivated intellect of the 
 world, to represent an incarnate God, and we should 
 have a representation of the gods of Greece and Rome, 
 or the puerilities and absurdities of the Hindoo incarna- 
 tions, or a very imperfect copy of Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 (6.) How, now, is this to be accounted for? If the 
 case was real, and if there was a real incarnation in the’ 
 person of Christ, and if these illiterate men were in-: 
 spired to give a just account of his life, then the whole. 
 matter is explained ; if neither of these were true, then 
 the mystery remains as yet unsolved, and will remain 
 unsolved forever. 
 
3808 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS ADAPTED TO THE WANTS 
 OF MAN, AS ILLUSTRATED IN THESE EIGHTEEN HUND- 
 RED YEARS. 
 
 AFTER the lapse of eighteen hundred years, in which 
 Christianity has had a fair opportunity, with other re- 
 ligions, to make a trial of what it is, we ought to be 
 able to show that it meets a want in man, and that the 
 manner in which it does this is proof of its divine ori- 
 gin. The argument would be the stronger if it could 
 be shown that other forms of religion have failed to 
 meet this want, and that they, in this respect, leave the 
 race as they find it. The direct argument for the di- 
 vine origin of Christianity, as derived from this source, 
 would be that God has endowed man with certain 
 wants and necessities as a religious being, and that, in 
 the failure of all other systems, the system which would 
 actually meet those wants must have had its origin in 
 Him who has thus endowed the human soul. 
 
 It may be assumed now that the ancient religions of 
 the world did not meet those wants, and that for this 
 reason they have been suffered to die out. The He- 
 brew religion did not do this; for, although it has re- 
 mained in the world, and is, in fact, found in almost all 
 nations, it does not so commend itself to mankind as to’ 
 make them desire to revive it, and to rebuild the Tem- 
 ple; and, but for some purposes which can be best ex- 
 plained on the supposition that the prophecies in the 
 Bible respecting it are to be fulfilled, it would have 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 3809 
 
 died out long ago, and would be now reckoned with 
 the religion of the Egyptians and the Babylonians as 
 among the things that are past. 
 
 The religion of the Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, of 
 the Assyrians, of the Persians, of the Greeks, of the Ro- 
 mans, did not meet the wants of mankind, and have 
 been suffered to die. The religion of the Egyptians 
 was dead, not to be revived again, when Christianity 
 appeared. The same was true of the religion of Baby- 
 lon and Nineveh. The religion of Zoroaster was dying 
 away. The religion of the Grecks had lost its power, 
 and that of the Romans was following in the same line 
 of decline and extinction. Those religions were becom- 
 ing effete and obsolete; and whether a new religion 
 should come or not to meet the wants of mankind, 
 there was nothing that could revive them, and restore 
 to them their former ascendency. They have now, in 
 fact, died out, and nothing can revive and restore them. 
 Julian brought all the power of the empire to bear on 
 the expressed purpose of restoring paganism, endeavor- 
 ing to reanimate it by incorporating into it, In some 
 measure, the spirit of Christianity ; for he “ beheld with 
 envy,” says Mr. Gibbon, “the wise and humane regula- 
 tions of the Church; and he very frankly confesses his 
 intention to deprive the Christians of the applause, as 
 well as the advantage, which they had acquired by the 
 exclusive practice of charity and beneficence.”* He 
 failed, and the attempt was decisive and final. No one 
 of imperial rank has ventured on the experiment since, 
 and the world has shown no disposition to recall to life 
 the ancient religions of Egypt, of Babylon, of Nineveh, 
 of Persia, of Greece, of Rome. Not an idol of the an- 
 cient religions has been restored to its place. Not a 
 
 * Decline and Fall, vol. ii., p. 31. 
 
310 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 temple of ancient paganism is occupied as a place of 
 worship. There are no augurs, flamens, priests, or vestal 
 virgins; there are no restored altars and no sacrifices. 
 Those priests are disrobed; those altars are destroyed ; 
 those temples, immortal works of art, stand as noble 
 ruins, to tell what the religion was in its palmy days, 
 but no one, denizen or foreigner, visits them now to 
 worship the gods once honored there. The Parthenon 
 is in ruins; the Pantheon is a Christian church, in hon- 
 or of the Virgin Mary; Minerva is no more adored in 
 the one, and the gods of the nations are no longer set 
 up in the other. These ancient religions did not meet 
 the wants of human nature, and they have been suffered 
 to die away, to be revived no more. 
 
 It is a fair question whether Christianity has become, 
 or ever will become, thus antiquated and obsolete, and 
 whether, in the advanced period of the world which we 
 have reached, it shows that it is not adapted to the na- 
 ture of man, and is to die away, to be superseded or not 
 by some other form of religion; whether the time has 
 come, or will soon come, when, whatever it may have 
 done hitherto, some new system—say the “ positive 
 philosophy,” shall be substituted in its place. “ Chris- 
 tianity, we are told,” says Professor Goldwin Smith, 
 “like other phases of the great onward movement of 
 humanity, has its place, and that a great place in histo- 
 ry. In its allotted epoch it was progressive in the high- 
 est degree, and immense veneration and gratitude are 
 due to it on that account; but, like other phases ofthe 
 same movement, it had its appointed term. That term 
 it has already exceeded. It has already become sta- 
 tionary or retrograde; it has begun, instead of being the 
 beneficent instrument, to be the arch-enemy of human 
 progress. It cumbers the earth; and the object of all 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 311 
 
 honest, scientific, free-thinking men, who are lovers of 
 their kind, should be to quicken the death-pangs into 
 which it has manifestly fallen, and remove once for all 
 this obstruction to the onward movement of the race. 
 Confusion and distress will probably attend the final 
 abandonment of ‘the popular religion ;’ but it is better 
 at once to encounter them than to keep up any longer 
 an imposture which is disorganizing and demoralizing 
 to society, as well as degrading to the mind of man. 
 Let us at once, by a courageous effort, say farewell to 
 our old faith, and, by a still more courageous effort, 
 find ourselves a new one.”* . 
 
 In illustrating the argument which I propose to sub- 
 mit to you at this time, it will be proper, in the first 
 place, to make some inquiries, and to lay down some 
 principles, in regard to man, considered with reference 
 to religion, or to the necessities of his nature as demand- 
 ing a religion; and, in the second place, to consider the 
 question whether Christianity satisfies the wants of our 
 nature in this respect; or, in other words, how far in 
 eighteen hundred years it has commended itself to man 
 as meeting those wants, and as thus showing that it is 
 from God. 
 
 The entire argument will be stated in view of the fact 
 that there has been a practical trial of Christianity on 
 these points for a period now extending over more than 
 eighteen hundred years. 
 
 I. The first point relates to human nature—to man— 
 considered with reference to the necessity of a religion. 
 
 It may be assumed that a system of religion claiming 
 to be from God, in order that it may be received by 
 man, must be in accordance with the moral nature of 
 man, and with his innate convictions of what is true 
 
 __ * Lectures on the Study of History, p. 118. 
 
312 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 and what is right. In other words, a revelation will 
 not. contradict what our nature has taught us to believe 
 to be true and right, but such a revelation will be in 
 the line of such convictions, and will add to them, not 
 ignore or deny them. | 
 
 This is a point to which the infidel may hold us. If 
 the pretended revelation is not of this character, he has 
 an argument against it which we can not well answer; 
 if it has this character, we have an argument for its 
 truth to which he may find it not less difficult to reply. 
 
 (1.) The first point to be considered here is, What is 
 the “end” of life? What is man made for? What, if 
 the object of his creation were accomplished, or fully 
 carried out, would be secured, so that we could say that 
 the purpose or end of life was fully obtained? These 
 questions are equivalent to that which, to most of us, 
 was proposed in our early childhood, as being proper 
 not only to our age then as entering on life, but as ly- 
 ing at the foundation of every just system of theology, 
 “What is the chief end of man?” The framers of our 
 Westminster Catechism felt that that was the first sub- 
 ject on which it was proper to instruct a child; the 
 man of mature or advanced years will feel that that is 
 the great-question which is to be before him alike in 
 the middle and at the end of life. 
 
 Can we look into the nature of man, and find an an- 
 swer to this question ? 
 
 Men answer it according to their own philosophy; 
 their propensities; their pleasure. The Epicurean was 
 ready with his answer; the Stoic with his; the Plato- 
 nist with his. The votary of the world; the child of 
 _ gayety; the disciple of mammon; the aspirant for fame, 
 each is ready with his. There is something which, being 
 accomplished, would be to them the “end of life ;” 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 313 
 
 which would meet, as they suppose, all the aspirations 
 of their nature, and which, being obtained, would be an 
 answer to the question. For what purpose were they 
 made? Why were they endowed with the faculties 
 which have been conferred upon them? Why have 
 such hopes and aspirations been implanted in their 
 souls ? j 
 
 To furnish a just answer to the question, let us look 
 at the following things: 
 
 (a) There zs such an “ end” or object contemplated in 
 the creation of man. There are so many aspirations; 
 so many hopes; so many desires—there is, if the ex- 
 pression may be used, so much machinery in the mental 
 construction of man, that we look for an end or object, 
 just as we do in the watch or the steam-engine. There 
 is a stimulus prompting to something, of which the 
 main-spring in the one, and the steam in the other, and 
 the arrangements for distributing and directing the 
 power in both, would be a faint illustration. If there és 
 no such end or object, all the complexity of wheels and 
 springs, so nicely adjusted in the one, and all the ar- 
 rangements of boilers and valves in the other, would be 
 a mere waste. In our moral nature there is much of 
 this. There is clear proof of design. There is great 
 skill displayed. There is a very nice adjustment of our 
 different mental powers to each other. There is no con- 
 fusion. The powers of cur nature are never displaced. 
 There is more in the variety of those powers than in the 
 most complicated machinery; there is more skill in the 
 adjustment. There has been a vast expenditure of wis- 
 dom in our mental constitution. Can we believe that 
 it nas been for naught—for no “end” or purpose? 
 
 (0) Whatever that “end” may be, considered as char- 
 acterizing man, it must be common to the race. If the 
 
 O 
 
314 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 race is one, we shall find it under all*the types of hu- 
 manity. If the Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, and 
 American varieties constitute one race, we shall find 
 it the same in all; if these different varieties are dif- 
 ferent races, we shall find some such “end” pertain- 
 ing to each of those races respectively; if we find that 
 there 7s some one end common to all these varieties, it 
 will be difficult to set aside the argument from that fact 
 that these varieties ave one race, and that the Bible ac- 
 count of the origin of man, as derived from one pair, is 
 true. The inquiry is, What is the “end” of man ?—not 
 of the brute. There is an “end” or purpose in their cre- 
 ation, but we should not be satisfied on being told that 
 the end of ow creation is the same as theirs. That is 
 a philosophy not to be recognized in this place as true 
 philosophy which makes no distinction between man 
 and the brute. 
 
 (c) Whatever that “end” or purpose may be, it must 
 relate to the future. As far as we have the means of 
 judging, the brute creation, so far as consciousness is 
 concerned, if that term may be applied to a brute, acts 
 only with reference to the present. Brutes make no cal- 
 culations; they form no plans; they have no “ends” of 
 living which extend into that which is to come. There 
 is nothing in their nature which, being developed, will 
 find its complement or fulfillment in any thing lying 
 in the future. The arrangement by which the beaver 
 builds its dam, and the bee hoards its stores of honey, 
 and the squirrel gathers nuts and acorns for the winter, 
 and the bird makes its nest, is an arrangement of in- 
 stinct, not of thought—whatever that instinct may be. 
 However in other respects man may resemble the 
 brute, yet he differs in this—that his plans do pertain 
 to the future, and that those plans are not the result of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 310 
 
 instinct, but of conscious thought. There is something 
 in the future in which our happiness lies. It is not in 
 the present. | 
 
 (d) That arrangement looks on to a future state. 
 ‘What I mean is, that there is that in the mental consti- 
 tution of man which looks to a continuance of being be- 
 yond death; which would not be found in man ifhe were 
 not to exist there; and which can be explained only on 
 the supposition that he is immortal—unless it shall be al- 
 leged that the Maker of man has deceived and beguiled 
 him by unfounded hopes and fears: that is, unless a 
 watchmaker had made a watch with no purpose that it 
 should keep time, or a machinist had made a steam-en- 
 gine with no purpose that it should ever accomplish 
 any end in the cotton factory, on the railroad, or in the 
 steam-boat. This arrangement is in the very nature of 
 man, and it extends to all the results of human conduct. 
 The plans of men relate to the future. The results of 
 their actions strike into the future. Those results are 
 indefinite in regard to the future; and as it is said that 
 the circle of the wave made by the pebble may expand 
 indefinitely over the ocean, or the slightest vibration 
 of the air by speech may affect the whole atmosphere 
 of the globe, or any change on the earth’s surface, or in 
 the earth’s interior, may affect all the worlds of matter, 
 so it is certain that human conduct, in its results, will 
 extend indefinitely into the eternity of the future. 
 Those results travel over all the changes of this life to 
 meet us when those changes are passed through, and 
 will meet us in the world where there is no change. 
 Nothing interrupts those results. The deeds of youth 
 travel on to meet the old man bending over the grave; 
 the’ crimes committed in one land travel over continents 
 and oceans to meet him on the other side of the globe; 
 
316 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the conduct of yesterday comes over the slumberings 
 of the night, and meets us to-day. Sleep does not in- 
 terrupt that course; time does not; distance does not; 
 and there is no reason to think that death will, for 
 death is not an interruption to life and consciousness— 
 no, not so much as a night’s sleep. 
 
 There is, therefore, some “end” for which man was 
 made, and that end relates to the future. . 
 
 (2.) There is a religious want in man that must be 
 met in a revelation from God. Man is a religious being, 
 and unless a pretended revelation meets and satisfies 
 the wants of man as a religious being, it can not be re- 
 ceived as a revelation from God. 
 
 This want in man as a religious being exists in two 
 forms: (a) as essential to his nature, and (0) as a fallen 
 being. 
 
 (a) As man; as essential to his nature. 
 
 This is an original principle of our nature, and is uni- 
 versal. It is not the result of culture; it is not orig- 
 inated as the world advances from barbarism to civiliza- 
 tion; it is not detached from society as a relic of bar- 
 barism when the world makes those advances; it does 
 not characterize exclusively any one race of men; it is 
 not among the things which enter into the formation 
 of the different “types” of mankind; it does not serve 
 in any way to distinguish the Caucasian, the Mongolian, 
 the Ethiopian, and the American races; it is not con- 
 nected with the origin of species, or with the develop- 
 ment of species. Every where it exists, from the lowest 
 form of fetichism to the highest forms of devotion in 
 which homage is rendered to the one infinite and inde- 
 pendent God. 
 
 The desire of knowledge is universal in man; the de- 
 sire of society is universal; the desire of happiness is 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 314 
 
 universal; the principle of acting for the future.is uni- 
 versal. The existence of will, and imagination, and 
 memory, and reason is universal—in the lowest “ types” 
 of humanity, and in the highest; in the Ethiopian, the 
 American, the Mongolian, and the Caucasian races. 
 The mind of the Caucasian does not differ from the 
 mind of the Ethiopian in this respect. In neither case 
 is it the result of culture; in neither case has it sprung 
 from the change from barbarism to civilization; in 
 neither case can it be classed among the “ artificial” 
 wants that have been originated by an advanced state 
 of society; in neither case is it detached by progress 
 in civilization. Nothing has been added in respect to 
 these qualities of mind by civilization; nothing has been 
 dropped as the world has advanced. There never has 
 been a tribe of men found, in the lowest forms of hu- 
 manity, where these things do not exist; there never 
 has been such an advance made in civilization that any 
 new faculty or power has been added to the human 
 mind. All these are original endowments; all are the 
 work of the Creator. 
 
 Just so it is in religion. He who forms a theory of 
 human nature on the supposition that man is not a re- 
 ligious being, and has not a religious want to be sup- 
 plied, forms just such a theory as he would should he 
 assume that man has not a will, or is not endowed with 
 memory or with reason. He who attempts to meet the 
 wants of the world without recognizing the religious 
 principle, acts just as wisely as he would who should 
 attempt to meet the wants of society on the supposi- 
 tion that man has no desire of knowledge; that he has 
 no social propensities; that he has no will to be gov- 
 erned; that he has no rational nature to guide him; 
 that he has no passions to be restrained. 
 
318 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 That religious want must be met and satisfied in a 
 pretended revelation. If this is not done, the race will 
 sooner or later throw the system off— as the old sys- 
 tems of Greek and Roman mythology have been thrown 
 off, as not meeting the wants of man. 
 
 (0) There is a religious want in man as a fallen and 
 sinful being. It is in’ vain to deny that the race is sin- 
 ful, for all laws proceed on that supposition; all history 
 has recorded the fact. Tribunals of justice, prisons, 
 police arrangements, and the human consciousness, all 
 proclaim that man is a fallen being. 
 
 The remedy for this is somehow to be found in relig- 
 ion. Such is the universal belief of man. The convic- 
 tion of depravity takes this form, and is illustrated by 
 the religions of the world. There are no religions on 
 earth for perfectly pure and holy beings; there are none 
 which are not founded on the conviction of human de- 
 pravity; there are none which do not make arrange- 
 ments, in some form, for deliverance from sin. 
 
 All the religions of the world are religions of sin- 
 ners. With the exception of a few Pharisees, Philoso- 
 phers, and Deists—Lord Herbert, the first and the best 
 of British Deists, is not, however, one of these, for he 
 made “repentance for sin” one of the ten articles of 
 universal belief as entering into religion — with these 
 exceptions, all the religions of the world are the relig- 
 ions of sinners. They are religions of sacrifice; of pen- 
 ance; of pilgrimages; of self-inflicted tortures designed 
 to propitiate the gods, and to secure safety and forgive- 
 ness. Hecatombs of victims have been offered, and 
 rivers of blood have flowed to make expiation for hu- 
 man guilt. ° 
 
 There is no conviction more nearly universal in our 
 world than that the nature of man is sinful, and that a 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 319 
 
 religion to meet his wants must be a religion that will 
 propose an expiation for sin, and that will give peace 
 to a guilty conscience. 
 
 This universal conviction may be regarded as the 
 basis of our argument on this subject, and as final in 
 the case. It is vain to argue against universal convic- 
 tions of the human mind. It is vain to attempt to set 
 them aside. He never argues safely who argues against 
 those universal convictions; and however specious or 
 plausible a system of philosophy may be, it will ulti- 
 mately be set aside unless it is founded on those uni- 
 versal convictions. 
 
 It may—it must be assumed, therefore, that a relig- 
 ion to. meet the wants of men must be a religion adapt- 
 ed to sinners, or must be based on the supposition that 
 there is not only a religious want in man founded in his 
 original nature, but also in the fact that he is a sinner. 
 
 (3.) There are some principles pertaining to these 
 facts which the friends and the enemies of revelation 
 must alike admit to be true. They are such as the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 (a) There is such a thing as truth. 
 
 Truth may be regarded as comprising two things: 
 
 First. Truth as spoken, stated, represented; that is, as 
 exhibited by words, by signs, by pictures, by statuary. 
 In this sense, truth is the representation of things as they 
 are. A painting, in this sense, is true if 1t 1s a proper 
 representation of a landscape, of a waterfall, of a his- 
 torical scene, or of the human countenance. A drama 
 or a novel is true if it correctly represents human na- 
 ture, or is a just delineation of the passions of man. 
 Astronomical truth is a correct representation of the 
 heavenly bodies; geological truth, a correct representa- 
 tion of the world before the creation of man, as dis- 
 
320 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 closed by rocks and fossils; historical truth, a correct 
 representation of events as they have occurred in past 
 ages; mathematical truth, a correct representation of 
 facts in regard to number and quantity. 
 
 Second. Truth considered as existing in the reality of 
 things, or in the events and facts which are thus repre- 
 sented, or which lies at the basis of such representation. 
 In all truth there is not only a representation, but a basis 
 for the representation, or something on which the repre- 
 sentation is founded, and to which it must conform. 
 Thus, if the statement is made that two and two make 
 four, or that all the angles of a triangle are equal to 
 two right angles, the statement of these facts Js truth as 
 represented , but there is truth as the basis, or as the 
 foundation of this statement. These facts or realities 
 remain the same whether there is any representation of 
 them or not; whether they are known or unknown; 
 whether the representation of them by words, or signs, 
 or symbols, is true or false. 
 
 (2) There is that in man which responds to truth, or 
 which is a just ground of appeal in regard to truth. 'The 
 mind is so constituted that an impression is made upon 
 it by truth different from the impression made by error. 
 It is so made that it may be an element of calculation 
 in endeavoring to influence others; that they may be, 
 and will be, affected by truth if it is fairly brought be- 
 fore their minds ; so made that it is fair to assume that 
 there will be a uniform result in regard to the same in- 
 dividual, and in regard to different individuals, by the 
 proper exhibition of truth. Wherever man is found, 
 civilized or savage; whatever language he may speak; 
 under whatever government he may live; whatever 
 laws he may obey, or whatever form of philosophy or 
 religion he may embrace, so far as truth makes any im- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 321 
 
 pression, it is always the same impression, for it always 
 finds that in the mind which responds to it in precisely 
 the same way. This fact, not indeed capable of dem- 
 onstration, we always asswme as a maxim, or as an ele- 
 mentary thought in our endeavors to influence others. 
 We have the fullest conviction that to two boys in a 
 school, the proposition that two and two make four 
 conveys to them, as boys, precisely the same idea, and 
 conveys to them now the same idea which it will when 
 they reach middle life or old age. We can not doubt, 
 also, that it conveys to those boys the same idea which 
 it did to Newton in the maturity of his powers, or that, 
 to an American savage, or to a wandering Bedouin, or 
 to a New Zealander, it would convey precisely the same 
 impression. In like manner, also, although we may not 
 be able to demonstrate it, we have the fullest assurance 
 that the impression or image conveyed to the mind by 
 a tree, a landscape, a waterfall, a flower, is the same; 
 the same to the individual mind in all its changes; the 
 same to all minds, whether civilized or savage. And, 
 on the same principle, so far as the minds of men are 
 enlightened to appreciate truth, the same thing occurs 
 in regard to moral truths. That a parent should love 
 his child; that a child should venerate its parent ; that 
 ingratitude is base; that treachery is wrong; that to 
 do good to others is right—all these, and similar propo- 
 sitions, we have every reason to suppose, convey exact- 
 ly the same idea to every mind. We may suppose, in- 
 deed, that it might have been otherwise; that, for ex- 
 ample, the eyes of men might have been so made that 
 what to one conveys the idea of white might have con- 
 veyed to others the idea of red; that men might have 
 been so made that what to one seems to besa triangle 
 would seem to another to be a quadrangle; that what 
 O02 
 
322 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 seems now to be virtuous and honorable to one, might 
 have seemed dishonorable and wicked to another; but 
 it is evident that, in that case, the world could not have 
 moved on in harmony at all, any more than it could at 
 the confusion of tongues at Babel. All would have 
 been disorder; language would have been useless ; any 
 communication of ideas from one to another would 
 have been impossible; society would have been imprac- 
 ticable ; speech, schools, writing, printing, painting, 
 statuary, would have been useless, and the world would 
 have a universal, though temporary Babel, for it would 
 soon have come to an end. 
 
 (c) Truth depends, for its reception by the mind, on 
 its being perceived as truth. 
 
 The mind sees or perceives it to be true. When the 
 truth referred to 1s an axiom, it is perceived at once 
 without any medium; when it is the result of a demon- 
 stration, the process of the demonstration merely puts 
 the mind, in reference to the truth demonstrated, in the 
 same state in which it is, without any such process— 
 as it is in reference to an axiom or self-evident truth. » 
 
 In illustration of this, it may be remarked that it is 
 possible to conceive that the power of perceiving truth 
 as intuitive, or without the aid of reasoning, might ex- 
 ist to almost any extent in created beings, as it exists 
 in an absolutely unlimited extent in God. We may 
 suppose that there might be, and that there actually 
 may be now, created intelligences to whom all that is 
 now perceived by the highest intellects on earth as the 
 result of the profoundest analysis may be seen to be 
 true at a glance, and may be, in fact, to their minds, 
 maxims or self-evident truths, lying, in their investiga- 
 tions, at the foundation of a vastly higher method of 
 reasoning than is yet possible to man, and bearing the 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 323. 
 
 same relation to a system of truth which is not now 
 conceivable by us, which the maxims of geometry do to 
 the highest forms of mathematical reasoning known 
 ‘among men. It is said of Newton that he read the 
 propositions of Euclid as if they were maxims or self- 
 evident truths, as being too plain and obvious to need 
 demonstration. Even the celebrated forty-seventh prop- 
 osition of the first book he did not pause to demon- 
 strate, for he saw at a glance the truth of the proposi- 
 tion, and it can not be doubted that there may be minds 
 to whom the highest discoveries, even of Newton, would 
 be perceived at once to be axioms or self-evident truths, 
 from which they would start off on a higher career of 
 reasoning than would be possible for any intellect 
 known to us. Then there is the mind of God, high 
 above all, to whom al truth is self-evident—the mind. 
 of One who sees all truth as we perceive the simplest 
 maxims of geometry; who never reasons, but sees and 
 states things at once as they are. 
 
 (d) There is a distinction between right and wrong, 
 and this distinction is founded in the nature of things. 
 
 A thing can not be both right and wrorig at the same 
 time ; or now right and now wrong, as the result of ap- 
 pointment; or made right or wrong by mere will. An 
 object can not be black and white at the same time; or 
 now white and now black, as the result of appointment; 
 or made white or black by mere will. That can not be 
 made right to-day which in precisely the same circum- 
 stances was wrong yesterday, and that can not be 
 right for one class or order of beings which in precise- 
 ly the same circumstances would be wrong in another. 
 A lie can not be truth, nor can truth be falsehood ; hon- 
 esty can not be fraud, nor fraud honesty; love can not 
 be hatred, nor hatred love; and as these can not be 
 
324 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 transmuted into one another, so by no authority can 
 they, in precisely the same circumstances, be made obli- 
 gatory in one case and be prohibited in another. No 
 one can believe that justice in God or man depends on 
 mere will, or that it would be proper for either to per- 
 form any act which he chose, and call it justice. In like 
 manner, no one can believe that truth in God or man de- 
 pends on mere will, and that it would be proper for 
 either to make any statement which he chose and to 
 call it truth, or that 1t would be right to call one utter- 
 ance to-day truth, and to call it to-morrow falsehood. 
 Every man is somehow so made that he can not believe 
 that the contrary of this would be true, or that, under 
 any circumstances, it would be proper for even God to 
 reverse things in such a way that it would be right for 
 Him to do what he now denounces and condemns as 
 evil, false, and wrong, or that the mere act of his doing 
 it would make it right. Every conception which we 
 can form of the Supreme Being implies that, by His own 
 eternal nature, he zs just, and holy, and true, and good; 
 not that he has made himself to be so by an arbitrary 
 act, or that the contrary would be just, and holy, and 
 true, and good, if found in Him. Account for it as we 
 may, we are so constituted that we must believe this, 
 and can not believe the contrary; and this fact demon- 
 strates that it was designed by our Maker that it should 
 be so. 
 
 (ce) There is that in man which responds to the distine- 
 tion of right and wrong. 
 
 This proposition is almost too plain to admit of illus- 
 tration. All men instinctively act on it in their treat- 
 ment of others; all legislators assume it to be true; all 
 parents regard it as indisputable in their treatment of 
 their children; all authors who write on the subject of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 325 
 
 morals take it for granted; and all preachers of the 
 Gospel make it the ground of their most solemn ap- 
 peals and most earnest exhortations. To Jews and 
 Gentiles alike — barbarians, Scythians, bond and free, 
 the apostle Paul could say of his preaching, “ by mani- 
 festation of the truth commending ourselves to every 
 mans conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor., iv., 2), 
 nor could we preach at all if we did not assume that 
 this could be done. 
 
 (f) A revelation from God will not contradict any 
 
 truth, on any subject, however that truth may be made 
 known. 
 _ This, too, may be assumed as an axiom, and is too 
 plain to admit of argument. “Ad/ truth is from the 
 sempiternal source of light divine.” One truth can 
 not contradict another, and God can not contradict in 
 his word what he has declared in any other way to be 
 truth. 
 
 A revelation will not contradict zts own teachings— 
 that is, it will not deny in one place what it affirms in 
 another; a revelation will not contradict scientific truth 
 —that is, God will not, in his word, contradict what he 
 has revealed to men through their own reason or by 
 his own works; a revelation will not contradict histor- 
 ical truth—that is, God, in his word, will not contradict 
 what has actually occurred and has been properly re- 
 corded; a revelation will not contradict moral truth— 
 that is, the word of God will not contradict what has 
 been clearly made known as right or wrong by the con- 
 stitution of the mind as he has made it. These points 
 are mere illustrations of what is said in the Bible of 
 God: “He can not deny himself” (2 Tim., ii., 13). The. 
 infidel has a right to hold us to this proposition when 
 we urge the claims of a revelation; the defender of such 
 
326 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 a revelation is bound to show that the Bible does not 
 contradict itself, and that it does not contradict any 
 truth, from any other source, communicated to man, 
 (g) A pretended revelation which should contradict 
 established truth could not be received by mankind. . 
 This, also, is so plain as not to admit of demonstra- 
 tion. Two opposite statements could not both be re- 
 ceived as true. No conceivable evidence in favor of 
 a revelation could be stronger than the conviction that 
 two and two make four, or that all the angles of a tri- 
 angle are equal to two right angles. The mind must 
 believe these things. That mind is not in a sound state 
 which does not believe them. | 
 In the application of this rule it is implied (1) that, 
 if faith in a professed revelation be demanded, it is 
 right to require that all its statements shall be fairly 
 consistent with the ascertained facts of science; and (2) 
 it is equally implied that it is proper to demand, on the 
 other hand, that if there is any alleged conflict between 
 the statements of the book and the truths of science, 
 the facts of science shall be clearly established. It is 
 right for the friends of revelation, for example, to insist, 
 if it is alleged that man has been longer on the earth 
 than the statements in the Bible shall warrant, that the 
 Jact that he has been thus long on the earth shall be 
 established as a fact, and that it shall not be mere the- 
 ory or conjecture; that if it be alleged that the Mosaic 
 statement that all the races of men on the earth are de- 
 scended from one pair is inconsistent with the doctrine 
 of the separate origin of the races, the fact of such a 
 separate origin shall be clearly demonstrated ; that if it 
 is alleged that the disclosures of geology are inconsist- 
 ent with the statements in the book professing to be a 
 revelation, the facts of geology shall be clearly estab- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. S2F 
 
 ~ 
 
 lished. The alleged truths of science must be demon- 
 strated; the facts must be ascertained; the contradic- 
 tion must be palpable; the discrepancy must be so great 
 - that the statements can not, by any fair rules of inter- 
 pretation, be reconciled. 
 
 (i) A revelation on the same line of subjects will, so far 
 as coincident, carry forward the truth already known, 
 not contradict tt. 
 
 The meaning of this rule is this—that a revelation 
 may make disclosures in regard to truth in advance of 
 what is known from other sources, or may state what 
 will be seen to be true when the discoveries of science 
 come up to it, if they ever do; in other words, that the 
 disclosures of revelation will be in advance of, and not 
 contradictory to, the truths otherwise ascertained. Be- 
 tween the two there will be no more discrepancy than 
 between the actual though imperfect knowledge of a 
 child and the more matured and perfect knowledge of: 
 the same child when he becomes a man; than between 
 the lowest truths of geometry, as comprehended by the 
 school-boy, and the highest astronomical disclosures ee | 
 Newton or Laplace. 
 
 An illustration of this point may be derived from the 
 disclosures of the telescope. Vast as are the revela- 
 tions made by that instrument; far as it penetrates into 
 distant worlds; and much as it has enlarged the bound- 
 ariés of human knowledge, all its disclosures are in en- 
 tire harmony with those of the naked eye, and only car- 
 ry forward, on the same line, what was'seen by the un- 
 aided process of vision. The telescope never penetrates 
 regions where the laws of light are different from those 
 which affect the naked eye. It never discloses facts in 
 regard to other worlds which are inconsistent with the 
 doctrine of universal gravitation. It never penetrates 
 
328 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 into the empire of another God; and could the eye it- 
 self, now so comparatively limited in its range of observ- 
 ation, and to which so much which the telescope re- 
 veals is unknown, be so enlarged in its powers as to 
 take in all that the telescope reveals, it would see 
 things just as it does now by its aid.* 
 
 These seem to me to be just principles in regard to a 
 revelation; principles on which the friends and the en- 
 emies of the Bible may agree. 
 
 (4.) I proceed, then, to observe that a revelation from 
 God—a religion which he reveals—will, in accordance 
 with these principles, meet the wants of man; alike his 
 religious wants as a creature, and his wants as a sinner. 
 It may be demanded that satisfactory provision shall 
 be made for both. If provision is not made for them, 
 it may be at once rejected; it will, sooner or later, be 
 dropped, as the religions of Egypt, of Babylon, and of 
 Greece have been. Such a revelation must meet and 
 satisfy the essential religious want in the nature of 
 man, and it must, at the same time, meet and satisfy his 
 wants as a sinful and fallen being, and in both commend 
 itself to him as true. These are by no means the same 
 thing, as the provision to be made for the wants of a 
 sick person and a person in health are by no means the 
 same. 
 
 For the former of these there is the demand for a 
 God to be worshiped; there is the want of that which 
 will answer the question “ What is the end of life?” or 
 
 
 
 * These points seem to me to deserve a more extended illustration 
 than would have been possible in a single Lecture, and I may be per- 
 mitted, therefore, to refer to a work entitled ‘‘ Inquiries and Sugges- 
 tions in Regard to the Foundation of Faith in the Word of God,” 
 published by Parry & McMillan, 1859, from which these remarks have 
 been abridged, p. 5-36. 
 
. ~ 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 3829 
 
 why man was made—some object worthy of the pow- 
 ers which have been called into being ; there is the ne- 
 cessity of some statement or promise which will meet 
 the desire of immortality; there is the need of an affir- 
 mation that there will be a world beyond the grave, 
 where the soul may forever expand in power and in 
 knowledge; there is the need that there shall be a range 
 of truths and objects that shall correspond with the 
 greatness of the human soul. 
 
 For the latter of these the demand would be for a rey- 
 elation of some system that would in its arrangements 
 contemplate man as a fellow-being, and meet and sat- 
 isfy his wants as such. Thus, in studying the works of 
 nature with reference to the question whether the world 
 has been fitted up so as to meet the wants of man, there 
 are two distinct questions: the one, Whether there are 
 arrangements to meet his wants as @ creature of God, 
 considered without reference to the question whether 
 he is liable to disease? and the other is, Whether there 
 are arrangements to meet his wants considered as liable 
 to disease and as a sufferer? These are by no means 
 the same questions. The arrangements might have been 
 complete in regard to the one, while no provision should 
 have been made for the other. The one is the inquiry 
 which would have occurred to man when in the Garden 
 of Eden, and when a stranger to disease; the other is 
 an inquiry which could not but occur to him when re- 
 jected from Eden, when driven forth to encounter dis- 
 ease, and when death was in prospect. The former in- 
 quiry might have been easily answered. ‘The first Par- 
 adise, in its arrangement, presented an answer at once. 
 But what would the man have discerned there which 
 would have contemplated the latter? Even if there 
 were such things there, until he had become a fallen be- 
 
coal 
 330 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ing, and was brought into circumstances when he need- 
 ed them, they must have passed for things whose use: 
 was unknown. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, there is in nature just 
 such an arrangement; an arrangement made in the be- 
 ginning of the creation, and in anticipation of the fact 
 that man would be subject to disease. It is to be re- 
 marked, also, that, so far as appears, the one is entirely 
 independent of the other; the one is in no manner 
 necessary to the other. The world, as a world, might 
 have been complete without attaching healing proper- 
 ties to plants and minerals; certainly without creating 
 things whose only properties of value are healing prop- 
 erties. If mercury could not have been so made as to 
 have been of value in the arts without also the append- 
 age that it might be a medicine, yet certainly there was 
 no necessity for creating the Peruvian tree whose only 
 value is the bark, and the only value of whose bark is 
 the cure of fevers. 
 
 In fact, the arrangement for healing is an entirely in- 
 dependent system, and yet as essential to man as the 
 arrangements for the supply of his wants in health. 
 The wonderful process by which a broken bone knits 
 itself together was in no wise necessary for the making 
 of a bone; the process by which a severed vein or arte- 
 ry will plow for itself a new groove, and lay down a 
 new artery or vein for the blood, was in no wise neces- 
 sary for the making of a vein or artery originally, nor 
 for the original and healthful purposes of either—for ar- 
 teries and veins for conducting the blood from and to 
 the heart would have been perfect without this arrange- 
 ment; the creation of the materials of the materia medi- 
 ca of the healing art was in no wise necessary for the 
 production of food for man. It is a separate arrange- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 331 
 
 ment. ‘The one is not necessary to the other. The one 
 does not explain the other. The one is of importance 
 to man every where; the other is the foundation of a 
 distinct profession—the medical profession. 
 
 But the world as it is would not have been complete 
 without both, any more than a system of religion for 
 man would have been complete for man alike as a crea- 
 ture adapted to worship, and as a sinner to be redeemed 
 and saved, without both. A system of arrangements 
 for man in health would not have met the wants of man 
 in sickness, and a system which did not contemplate the 
 latter, and which did not make provision for it, would 
 not have been adapted to our world as it is. Hence it 
 was, that in the very structure of the creation, there 
 was an underlying system in anticipation of the fact 
 that man would be a sufferer—a system doubtless ex- 
 isting in paradise, and a system certainly now extend- 
 ing all over the world—for the arrangements for heal- 
 ing diseases are found on all the continents and in all 
 the islands, and in every land there are men endowed 
 with peculiar faculties to study nature with this view, 
 and to apply these remedies to the ever-varying forms 
 of disease. 
 
 Precisely of the same nature, though on a higher 
 scale, is it true that there was need of an arrangement 
 which would contemplate man as a sinner, and which 
 would make provision for his wants as such; and as’: 
 the world of nature could not be regarded as adapted 
 to the wants of man as he is without the arrangements 
 to alleviate pain and to cure diseases, so the arrange- 
 ments for religion would not have been complete with- 
 out a remedial system for sinners. | 
 
 II. We come, then, to what must be the main inquiry 
 on this subject, the question whether Christianity is a 
 
332 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 religion which thus meets and satisfies the wants of 
 man; or, in other words, how far in eighteen hundred 
 years it has commended itself to man as meeting those 
 wants, and as thus showing that it is from God. 
 
 (1.) Considered as a religion, it meets the essential 
 wants of man. We have seen what those wants are as 
 every where indicated in our world—as essential; as 
 deep-laid in our nature; as characterizing man. Man 
 wants a religion. He wants a God. He wants an ob- 
 ject of worship. He wants the hope of another life, 
 He wants the assurance that the soul is immortal. 
 
 Certainly all these are found in Christianity. It is a 
 “religion.” It is nothing else. That is its essential 
 idea. It is not philosophy; it is not science; it is not 
 a political theory; it is a religion, and meets the wants 
 of the soul only in regard to religion. It reveals a God, | 
 an object of worship. In the God of the Bible there is 
 all that can enter into the mind in the conception of a 
 God. He is infinite; he is uncreated; he is almighty; 
 he is the maker of all things; he is a Being whose 
 agency is every where; he is the Ruler of the universe ; 
 he is holy, just, pure, merciful. All that the soul can 
 demand in the idea of worship surely —of adoration, 
 homage, reverence —is to be found in the God of the 
 Bible.—Man wants some just view of what is the prop- 
 er “end” of life. Christianity declares it. It reveals 
 an “end” of living worthy of the powers with which he 
 is endowed, for it brings before him, as the main object 
 of life, the idea of living for eternity—Man wants the 
 hope of another life. Christianity reveals such a hope, 
 and sets it before him as that which is in advance of 
 all others, and which is to crown all.—Man wants the 
 assurance that the soul is immortal. What he can not 
 find in the argument of Plato; what he can not find in 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 330 
 
 any other religion, he finds here, laid at the foundation 
 of the whole system, that the soul is to live forever. 
 (2.) It meets the wants of man as a sinner—as a fallen 
 being. We could not regard it as of value; we could 
 not receive it as a religion, if it did not. It meets that 
 want. (a) It is the main idea in Christianity, running 
 through the entire system, and, more than any other 
 feature, constituting its peculiarity. (0) It is a special 
 and distinct arrangement, as much so as the arrange- 
 ment for healing disease is in the departments of na- 
 ture. There are things in Christianity, entering into 
 “its very nature, which would not have been there, or 
 which would have had no place, if it had not been sup- 
 posed that man was a sinner, just as there are arrange- 
 ments in nature which would not have been there, or 
 which would have had no place, if it had not been sup- 
 posed that man would be a sufferer, and the one with- 
 out such a supposition would be as inexplicable as the 
 other. (c) The system makes ample provision for par- 
 don. It bears on its face the assurance that the ar- 
 rangement is such that any and all may be forgiven. It 
 excludes no one by the idea that its power can not 
 reach the case, or that it was not intended for such a 
 sinner, or that it is exhausted, as no one, under any 
 form of disease, is shut out from the hope of a cure by 
 the idea that no medicinal remedies were provided in 
 the secrets of nature for such a case, or that the medi- 
 cines of the world are exhausted. It excludes no one 
 by the idea that the sin is so great that it can not be 
 forgiven, and in the proclamation of amnesty it makes 
 no exceptions. Human governments often do. In the 
 times of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams and 
 John Hancock were excepted by name in the royal 
 proclamation of amnesty; in our own great rebellion 
 
334 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 large numbers were excepted by proclamation from 
 the offer of pardon. (d) It contains provisions for par- 
 don that are honorable to God and honorable to man. 
 Man, even guilty man, could not accept it if it were not 
 so. A child offending could not wish to be forgiven if 
 the pardon could not be extended to him without dis- 
 gracing his parent; an offender against human law 
 must demand that the pardon in his own case should 
 not be dishonorable to the government and to his coun- 
 try. So man, even a sinner, could not receive a relig- 
 ion as coming from God if it were essential to the 
 idea of the religion that God was regardless of truth, 
 of justice, and of law; that he had no concern about 
 his own character; that his veracity was of no conse- 
 quence; that his law could be set aside at will; that it 
 was his nature to treat virtue and vice, truth and false- 
 hood, rebellion and allegiance, both alike. Who could 
 put confidence in such a God? Who could embrace a 
 religion founded on such assumptions? Now something 
 like this does occur, and always occurs in pardon as ex- 
 tended to the guilty under a human government. The 
 pardon of an offender, justly convicted—and there is no 
 other proper idea of pardon—is always a proclamation 
 that in some cases crime may be committed with im- 
 punity ; that in some cases the law is to be disregarded, 
 and the decrees of justice to be set aside; that guilty 
 men may go at large for whose crimes justice has re- 
 ceived no atonement—no satisfaction. Pardon in such 
 a case always does just so much to weaken the strong 
 arm of the law ; is just so far a proclamation that crime 
 may be committed with impunity. There is not a goy- 
 ernment in the world that could safely make the proc- 
 lamation of universal forgiveness as it is made in the 
 Gospel; that could throw open the doors of all prisons; 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 335 
 
 that could invite all convicts—burglars, counterfeiters, 
 thieves, and murderers, to come out and roam at large 
 over the land. Who would feel that his house or his 
 life was safe? (e) Again: The system of pardon pro- 
 posed in Christianity is honorable to man—to those who 
 have offended. It requires no needless humiliation ; no 
 mortifying concessions or confessions; no conformity to 
 rites and ceremonies that would tend only to debase 
 and degrade. It might have been otherwise; and we 
 could not have rejected it with safety if it had been so. — 
 If it had required men to gird themselves with sack- 
 cloth; to cast dust on their heads; to sit down in 
 ashes; to clothe themselves in habiliments of squalid 
 poverty ; to put on robes such as they wore who were 
 condemned by the Inquisition—with tongues of fire and 
 pictured demons; to go in solemn procession with some 
 symbol of eternal death as deserved by sin; to pass thus 
 through life humbled and degraded, man could not have 
 proved that this would be wrong; he could not have 
 shown that it would not be wise and well to accept of 
 pardon and life even on these conditions. In the reign 
 of Edward III. of England (1347), when Calais was be- 
 sieged, Edward required as a condition in surrendering 
 the city when it could hold out no longer, that “ six of 
 the most considerable citizens should be sent to him, to 
 be disposed of as he should think proper; that they 
 should come to his camp carrying the keys of the city 
 in their hands, bareheaded and barefooted, with ropes 
 about their necks, and on these conditions he promised 
 to spare the lives of the remainder.’”* So, at least for 
 the sake of illustration, we may conceive that God 
 might have required all men to appear before him in 
 some similar manner as a sign of submission and re- 
 * Hume’s History of England, vol. i., p. 577. 
 
336 LECIURES ON THE 
 
 pentance, and as a condition of pardon. But he has 
 done no such thing. There are no degrading and de- 
 basing rites in the Christian religion; there are no hu- 
 miliations required for the mere sake of humiliation; 
 there are no arrangements merely to mortify men. 
 There are no mummeries; there are no painful postures 
 or processions; there are no requirements like those of 
 letting the nails grow in the clenched hand till they cut 
 into the flesh; fixing the arm in one position till it be- 
 comes rigid; swinging on hooks fastened in the mus- 
 cles; standing on lofty columns in heat, and cold, and 
 ’ storm; or withdrawing to caves and solitudes far from 
 the haunts of men. All these are the inventions of men 
 themselves; they show, perhaps, what men would wil- 
 lingly have submitted to if such degradations had been 
 required; they show what men regard as the proper 
 representations and symbols of the evil and degrada- 
 tion of sin. But in the Gospel there are no degrading, 
 no dishonorable acts required. Let us suppose, for the 
 sake of illustration, that there had been. The son of an 
 honorable father is guilty of a crime. He is told that 
 he may be pardoned if he will perform some dishonor- 
 able act. He is to betray his father, and deliver him 
 up to death. “‘ No, says he, with generous indigna- 
 tion, ‘I do no such thing. I can not purchase life on 
 any such condition. I am indisputably guilty; but I 
 can not add to that guilt a baser crime that I may live. 
 I will not add meanness, and ingratitude, and filial im- 
 piety to my crime for the sake of saving my life. Wel- 
 come the rack; welcome the thumb-screw ; welcome the 
 gibbet, rather than that I should be guilty of such a 
 crime!’ God requires nothing of this. He asks no self- 
 inflicted tortures; no painful pilgrimages; no renuncia- 
 tion of the dignity that belongs to a man, that he may 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 337 
 
 be saved. He asks that he shall repent of sin and for- 
 sake it—for it is that which debases and degrades; he 
 asks that he shall accept of the offer of mercy on the 
 terms which he proposes—for that is the way in which 
 we receive all the blessings which come from his hand; 
 he asks that he shall lead a pure life, and hereafter keep 
 his Maker’s law. 
 
 (3.) The religion is on @ line with all that exalts and 
 adorns the race; with the solution of the problems 
 which men are endeavoring to work out in regard to 
 law, to liberty, to happiness. It attaches itself, by a 
 natural affinity, to all that ameliorates and civilizes so- 
 ciety; to all that is stricken out in the progress of the 
 world that raises men to a higher elevation. There are 
 religions which hold men as they are; there are relig- 
 ions which are obstructions to the advancement of the 
 race; there are religions which are to be removed if 
 the race shall make progress; there are religions which 
 foster vice; there are religions which debase and de- 
 grade mankind. There was much in the religion of 
 Greece that tended to encourage vice—for “it was not 
 for every man to go to Corinth”*—refined, in many re- 
 spects, as Corinth was; there is every thing in the 
 Buddhist religion to fix society where it is, and to pre- 
 vent progress; there is much in the Hindoo religion 
 which must be removed if true science makes advances, 
 for its religion and its science are identical—disclosed 
 in the same books, and sanctioned by the same author- 
 ity; there is every thing in the monastic system to hold 
 men in degradation; there is much in the Roman Cath- 
 olic system generally that has tended to retard the 
 ‘progress of mankind. It was not by an accident that 
 Galileo was imprisoned; it is not by an accident that 
 
 * ou mavrog avopds tig KépuvSov éotv 6 move. 
 
 E 
 
338 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the Bible, under that system, is not spread abroad in 
 vulgar tongues. 
 
 I am not ignorant that it has been affirmed that 
 Christianity has retarded the progress of mankind, nor 
 are you or [ignorant of the arguments which have been 
 referred to on this subject. 
 
 It is not for me now, and in this place, to attempt to 
 prove that Christianity has been connected with the 
 progress of the race. In the fullest blaze of Christian- 
 ity, and at the same time surrounded with the highest 
 developments of society in intelligence, in literature, 
 in the sciences, and in the ornamental and useful arts; 
 in an age and a country where, under the influence of 
 Christianity, the comforts of life have been carried to 
 the highest point hitherto reached; in a land of free- 
 dom, made free under the best developments of the 
 Christian religion, it would not become me to pause, 
 even were there time, to attempt to prove that Chris- 
 tianity is not inimical to the highest development of so- 
 ciety; that it is on the line of all that adorns and ex- 
 alts the race. | 
 
 There have been, indeed, other civilizations; there 
 has been progress in other lands than those where 
 Christianity has prevailed. 
 
 But it is to be remarked that there has been no “ sus- 
 tained historical progress” except that which has been 
 confined to Christian nations. “ Where,” it may be 
 asked, “is the brilliant monarchy of Haroun Alras- 
 chid? How ephemeral was it as compared even with 
 that old Byzantine empire into whose frame Christian- 
 ity had infused a new life under the very ribs of death; 
 a life which the fatal bequest of Roman despotism, ex- 
 tending itself to the Church as well as to the state, 
 could scarcely quench, and which, through ages of Mo- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 339 
 
 hammedan oppression, has smouldered on beneath the 
 ashes, to burst out again in reviving Greece. Even in 
 the Moorish communities of Spain, the flower, as they 
 were, of Mohammedan civilization, internal corruption 
 had prepared the way for the conquering arms of Fer- 
 dinand and Isabella. Mohammedanism, however, what- 
 ever the degree of progressive energy displayed by it 
 may have been, was not a separate and independent re- 
 ligion, but a debased offspring of Judaism and Chris- 
 tianity. Turning to the remoter East, we find that its 
 history has not been a history of progress, but of the 
 successive descents of conquering races from the more 
 bracing climate of the North, subjugating the languid 
 inhabitants of the plains, and founding a succession of 
 empires, sometimes mighty and gorgeous, but always 
 barren of nobler fruits, which, when the physical energy 
 of the conquering race was spent in its turn, at once 
 fell into decay. China advanced at an early period to 
 a certain point of material civilization, but, having 
 reached that point, she became a by-word of immobil- 
 ity, as Egypt, the ancient China, was in a former day. 
 The civilization of Mexico is deplored by certain philos- 
 ophers, who seem to think that, had its career not been 
 cut short by Spanish conquest, it might have attained 
 to a great height, and confirmed their views of history. 
 But what reason is there to think that Mexico would 
 ever have advanced beyond great buildings created by 
 slave labor, human sacrifices, and abominable vices ?”* 
 But need I attempt to prove that Christianity is con- 
 nected with the progress of the race; that it originates 
 much that is connected with that progress; that it at- 
 taches itself to all that is connected with progress? 
 Look at the press. If Christianity did not originate the 
 * Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 121, 123. 
 
340 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 discovery of the art of printing, yet that discovery was 
 not made in China, where it might have been supposed 
 it would have been; where, from time immemorial, they 
 had the art of printing solid pages from solid blocks of 
 wood, and where all that was necessary to complete the 
 art was to saw their blocks into separate letters—and 
 yet Chinese genius was exhausted when it had invented 
 the block; Chinese stolidity arrested the progress there, 
 and left the invention to be stricken out, as God intend- 
 ed it should be, in connection with the Christian relig- 
 ion. If, too, the Bible was not the first book that was 
 printed, it was one of the first; and it has been, and 
 is even now, the book most frequently printed since. 
 Look at a missionary ship. The missionary himself 
 goes as among the best representatives of Christian 
 lands, and of the highest form of Christian civiliza- 
 tion—trained in Christian civilization, educated in the 
 best schools, imbued with the best forms of learning, in- 
 structed in science and the arts. We know what he 
 will take with him to the benighted lands to which he 
 goes—the press, the telescope, the quadrant, the com- 
 pass. We know what he will do when he gets there. 
 He will set up the press; he will create a written lan- 
 guage if there be not one existing; he will open a. 
 school; he will found a college; he will introduce the 
 arts of life; he will preach the Gospel—the source of 
 all that which has transformed Huns, and Vandals, and 
 Goths, and Saxons, and Celts into the civilized nations 
 of Europe, and which has made Germany, and France, 
 and Holland, and England, and Scotland, and our own 
 land, what ther are. 1 
 
 * For a farther and a more full illustration of the subject, going into 
 details which the time would not permit in this Lecture, I may refer 
 to the Lectures on the Study of History, by Goldwin Smith, p. 146- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 34] 
 
 de 
 
 I have not exhausted this subject. I have scarcely 
 entered on it. 
 
 I might dwell on the argument derived from the fact 
 that the Gospel does not, like other religions, become 
 effete, obsolete, and die out; that it imparts peace and 
 comfort to the sorrowing and the sad—an arrangement 
 in its very nature based on the idea that man is a suf- 
 ferer; that it gives peace to the troubled conscience— 
 an arrangement also in its very nature based on the 
 idea that man is a sinner, and that the consciousness of 
 sin gives a peculiar form of distress to the soul; and 
 that it gives peace in the hour of death—an arrange- 
 ment also in its very nature based on the idea that man 
 must die—lighting up the dark valley, and taking away 
 its “ sting” from death, and its “ victory” from the grave. 
 
 But there is one point involving the necessity of so 
 much illustration that it can not be entered on now, and 
 yet which is so essential to the argument that it could 
 not be made complete without it. It is the relation of 
 Christianity to the present stage of the world’s prog- 
 ress in science, civilization, and the arts. That point 
 will be reserved for the next, the closing Lecture. | 
 
 Meantime, the inference which I would wish to draw 
 from the argument presented this evening is, that such 
 a religion must be from God. 
 
 This is an argument which we may use now, but 
 which the apostles could not have used, and which 
 could not have been employed by the early “apologists” 
 for Christianity as it can be now. The experiment as 
 to the actual adaptation of the scheme to the wants of 
 man had not then been made. With them it was main- 
 ly theory, and there was as yet no experience to which 
 
 156. I may also refer, for general illustrations of the whole subject, to 
 Lecky on the History of Rationalism in Europe, vol. ii., p. 222-357. 
 
342 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 they could appeal. With all that could be alleged from 
 miracles, and prophecy, and the character of the Found- 
 er of the system, and the evidence of his resurrection 
 from the dead and of his ascension to heaven, still it 
 might be said that its adaptation to the real wants of 
 man as a creature and a sinner had not then been tried. 
 Who could tell whether, in the more advanced pe- 
 riods of the world’s history; in the changes which 
 would be made in human affairs; in the development 
 of the powers of man in the future; in the progress in 
 science and in the arts which the world would make 
 in future ages, this religion, with all that seemed to. 
 them to be fitted to the wants of man, might not show 
 itself insufficient to meet those wants, and pass into 
 forgetfulness, as many systems of philosophy had then 
 done, and as most of the religions of the world were 
 then doing? Who, without the gift of prophecy, could 
 then tell whether this religion would be found to be 
 so adapted to the nature of man as to meet him with 
 what would be needful in these new situations, and still 
 maintain its position in advance of all that philosophy, 
 science, and art could do for him ? 
 
 We now are in a situation to answer these questions. 
 
 Eighteen hundred years have passed away, and they 
 have been such in the changes occurring in society; in 
 the progress of the race; in the developments of the 
 human powers, that it may be assumed that if the relig- 
 ion has been found to be adapted to the wants of man 
 in those eighteen centuries, it will in all the centuries 
 to come. 
 
 The sum of what I have said in this argument is this: 
 That the system of Christianity is based on a profound- 
 er view of human nature, and of the wants of man, than 
 has been taken in any other system of religion, or than 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 343 
 
 in any system of philosophy; that the arrangements 
 which have been disclosed in the system are such as 
 man would make if he had the wisdom and the power 
 to make them himself—such as he has been struggling 
 for and panting for in all ages, and all over the world; 
 that these arrangements are, for the most part, wholly 
 beyond the reach of the native powers of man—involv- 
 ing the necessity of an atonement for sin which man 
 could not make; anticipating the wants of our nature 
 in every new age of the world, and in every new phase 
 of society ; keeping up with the world in its progress, 
 and still in advance of it—in the fact that unnumbered 
 millions of the race, in all situations and ranks, have 
 found in it an answer to the questions which men so 
 naturally and properly ask about God and eternal 
 things; in the fact that it has given peace in hundreds 
 of millions of instances to consciences troubled by sin; 
 in its influencée on society—on woman, on slavery, on 
 domestic comfort, on the arts of life, on liberty, on gov- 
 ernments and laws, on habits, manners, and customs; in 
 the fact that it has, from numberless eyes, wiped away 
 the tears of sorrow, and that it has given support, 
 peace, triumph in hundreds of millions of cases on the 
 bed of death. Perhaps I might have made the argu- 
 ment much shorter. I might have staked all on this 
 one point—as I do now—A RELIGION THAT WILL PRE- 
 PARE A SINFUL MAN TO DIE, AND THAT WILL GIVE PEACE 
 ON A DYING BED, MUST BE FROM GoD. 
 
344 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 
 THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE WORLD’S PROG- 
 RESS IN SCIENCE, CIVILIZATION, AND THE ARTS IN 
 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Ir has been remarked that “a system which would 
 unite in one sublime synthesis all the past forms of hu- 
 man belief, which accepts with triumphant alacrity 
 each new development of science, having no stereo- 
 typed standard to defend, and which represents the hu- 
 man mind as pursuing on the highest subjects a path 
 of continual progress toward the fullest and most trans- 
 cendent knowledge of the Deity, can never fail to exer- 
 cise a powerful intellectual attraction.”* 
 
 There is no doubt that the human mind desires such 
 a system of religion; that it is endeavoring, in this age, 
 in an eminent degree, to find it; that it will not be sat- 
 isfied without such a system. In other words, it is un- 
 doubtedly true that a system of professedly revealed 
 truth will not be received permanently by mankind un- 
 less it accords with this desire of the mind; unless it 
 welcomes every new discovery in science, and each new 
 invention in the arts; and unless it attaches itself to 
 every thing that goes into the real civilization and 
 progress of the world. To find, or to found such a sys- 
 tem, is the present effort of Rationalism, and it is a fair 
 question whether Christianity so meets and satisfies 
 this demand of the human mind that it will continue to 
 keep its place as the world makes advances. 
 
 * History of Rationalism in Europe, by W. E. H. Lecky, vol. i., p. 
 182. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 345 
 
 The closing Lecture in this course will be designed, 
 in some measure, to answer this question—a question 
 which the world has a right to ask, and which we are 
 bound to answer—a question on the solution of which 
 the reception of what is otherwise adduced as evidence 
 of the divine origin of the Christian religion will in a 
 very material degree depend. The argument in the 
 Lecture will be founded on the idea that a system orig- 
 inated long since—eighteen hundred years ago—which 
 will meet the condition of all future ages; which began 
 ahead of the world, and which keeps itself abreast or 
 ahead of the world, must be from God. It is capable 
 of easy demonstration that there is no such system un- 
 less it be Christianity. 
 
 It was assumed, of necessity, by Christianity, that it 
 had truths to disclose of great importance to mankind, 
 which the race, at the time when it was revealed, had 
 been unable to discover.* Man had, indeed, made great 
 progress in science, in civilization, and in art. The best 
 talent in the world had been-employed in investigating 
 the works of nature, and in inquiring into the relations 
 of man to the Creator and to another state of being. 
 When Paul stood on Mars’ Hill, he was, in respect to all 
 that contributes to human comfort, and that marks the 
 progress of the race, almost in a different world from 
 what one would have been in the rude age of Tubal 
 Cain, Jabal, and Jubal. A period of four thousand years 
 had elapsed since the creation, and all that man had ac- 
 cumulated on the subjects of religion, philosophy, and 
 the arts had culminated in Greece, and was represented 
 by the objects around him, and by the men that stood 
 before him. The experiment, continued for so long a 
 time, and under such circumstances, whether man could. 
 
 Bete Gore tuo 
 
 P2 
 
346 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 find out the knowledge of God and a way of salvation, 
 might be regarded as having been fairly made. If it 
 had been submitted to man himself to designate a suffi- 
 cient time to make the experiment, he himself would 
 admit that four thousand years must be regarded as 
 ample for the trial; if it were submitted to him to se- 
 lect the circumstances under which the trial could best 
 be made, he could hardly imagine, as I have endeavored 
 to show in a former Lecture, that the trial could have 
 been better made than in Greece. Yet, after that ex- 
 periment had been thus made, the Gospel claimed to 
 have truths indispensable to mankind far in advance 
 of all that man had been able to discover, and which it 
 was assumed could not be discovered by the unaided 
 human powers. The fact that it had such truths, and 
 that it answered questions which had been propounded 
 by Greek philosophers, but for which no answer had 
 been found, will not be disputed even by those who en- | 
 deavor to explain the Gospel on some other supposition 
 than that it is a revelation from heaven. It is claimed 
 to be a fact by all who believe that Christianity is a 
 revelation from God; it is shown to be a fact by the 
 progress which the race has made under that new sys- 
 tem as compared with its progress under the influence 
 of the Grecian philosophy. 
 
 Eighteen hundred years have passed away, and dur- 
 ing that period the race, in science, civilization, and the 
 arts, has made advances far more rapid than in any 
 eighteen centuries before, or than in all those four 
 thousand years. The world is, in most important re- 
 spects, a different world from what it was in the days 
 of Pericles and Plato. The telescope has extended its 
 boundaries indefinitely in one direction, and the micro- 
 Scope in the other. Science is a different thing now 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 347 
 
 from what it was then; civilization is different; art is 
 different. Our houses are different; our domestic ar- 
 rangements are different; our facilities for passing from 
 place to place, by land or sea, are different; our knowl- 
 edge of distant lands and oceans is different ; our means 
 of recording, transmitting, and perpetuating truth are 
 different; our knowledge of the substances which com- 
 pose our globe is different; our knowledge of the 
 world’s history before man appeared on it is different ; 
 our means of cultivating the fields, and of conducting 
 the operations of commerce, are different. Except in 
 architecture and sculpture, there is nothing in respect 
 to which the world is not now immeasurably in ad- 
 vance of what it was in the best days of Greece. A 
 Greek of the age of Pericles would be lost now in the 
 arrangements of civilization around him, not less than 
 one of the age of Tubal Cain would have been if sud- 
 denly translated to Athens. We use no Greek plows 
 in our fields; no Greek chariots in our wars or on our 
 journeys; no Greek implements in preparing our food, 
 in writing our books, in transmitting intelligence from 
 place to place; no Greek weapons of war; no Greek 
 ships in battle. We make no use in our schools of 
 their treatises on natural history, astronomy, medicine, 
 scarcely in mental philosophy; nor do we copy their 
 style of domestic architecture, or refer to them for in- 
 struction in the mechanic arts. We are in a different 
 world from what the ancient Greek was, and it might 
 be interesting to speculate how long it would take Per- 
 icles or Plato to learn to act, and move, and speak, and 
 live in our age. 
 
 It is a fair question whether, admitting that Chris- 
 tianity was in advance of the world at the time when 
 it was communicated to men, it still holds the same 
 
348 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 relative position? Is it still ahead of the world? Is it 
 abreast of it? Or has it fallen in the rear? Has it 
 been superseded by the discoveries which men have 
 made in science; by the progress of civilization; by the 
 advances in the arts? Has the world reached a point 
 where it can “get along” without the Gospel? Have 
 the powers of the human mind been so developed dur- 
 ing these eighteen hundred years that man can now suc- 
 cessfully grapple with questions which were too difficult 
 for even the cultivated mind of Greece; and have the 
 secrets of nature been so explored that the knowledge 
 which she has to impart to man, and which eluded the 
 inquiries in the academy, the porch, or the lyceum, can 
 now be found in the laboratory or the observatory? 
 Or, to put the question in a form more favorable to 
 Christianity, and in a form in which its friends would 
 demand that it should be put: Has Christianity itself 
 been an important element in the progress which the 
 race has made, and are the institutions of the present 
 time—the forms of civilization, the advances in the arts 
 and the comforts of life, to be traced so far to Christian- 
 ity that it may claim that it has been among the direct 
 causes in effecting these changes? Ifit be assumed or 
 conceded that this is so, then, also, it may be fairly 
 asked whether it has not done its work, and may not 
 now be dispensed with in the farther progress of the 
 race, and whether it is not now to take its place with 
 the systems adapted to a ruder age, which passed away 
 when the results had become incorporated in permanent 
 institutions, or when they had been superseded by bet- 
 ter systems. 
 
 These are questions which would be suggested by 
 certain forms of skepticism different from those of an- 
 cient times, but which are likely to become the forms 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 349 
 
 of unbeliefin the coming age. They are not questions 
 which would have occurred in the times of Celsus, Por- 
 phyry, or Julian; they are not the questions which 
 Hobbes, and Chubb, and Shaftesbury, and Bolingbroke 
 would have asked, but they are questions which lie at 
 the foundation of the whole system of Rationalism at 
 the present day. 
 
 There is another question, also, as suggested by these 
 remarks, which may be asked from a Christian point of 
 view. Assuming, as the defender of Christianity must, 
 that Christianity was ahead of the world at the time 
 when the revelation was made, and that in its doctrines 
 it still holds the same relative position, it is a fair ques- 
 tion whether, in respect to its means of perpetuity and 
 propagation, it still maintains the same relative posi- 
 tion, or whether the apostles had advantages in this re- 
 spect which the Church has not now, or which could 
 not be employed with success in the present condition 
 of the world. All history has united in the record of a 
 very rapid diffusion of the Gospel in the times of the 
 apostles; it has described the means which were em- 
 ployed, and which were then successful; it has deliy- 
 ered such an unmistakable testimony on the subject 
 that it required all the powers of Mr. Gibbon to furnish. 
 a philosophical explanation of the fact of its propaga- 
 tion on the supposition that the Gospel is an imposture. 
 But is it true that the Church in this age, in view of 
 the present stage of the world in civilization, in science, 
 ‘and the arts, can engage in propagating the system 
 under cirenmstances as favorable to success as were 
 those which existed in the times of the apostles? 
 
 These, indeed, are not the same questions, but they 
 are in the same line, and are alike suggested by the re- 
 lation of Christianity to the present age. It may be 
 
350 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 difficult to furnish an answer to both in the same argu- 
 ment, but perhaps the considerations suggested in rela- 
 tion to the one will involve all that is demanded in the 
 other. 
 
 I propose, in the conclusion of these Lectures, to con- 
 sider the question with reference to an argument for 
 the truth of Christianity, and as a continuation of the 
 course of thought in the last Lecture on the adapted- 
 ness of Christianity to the wants of man. 
 
 The points necessary to be considered, in order to 
 a proper elucidation of the subject, are, the fact that 
 Christianity, from the nature of the case, is a fixed 
 and unchangeable system, or that it makes no progress 
 from age to age; the fact that, while Christianity is 
 thus fixed and stationary, the world does make progress 
 in science, civilization, and the arts; the fact that, in 
 the circumstances of the case, they unavoidably come 
 into collision with each other; the inquiry on what sub- 
 jects they are likely to come into collision now as com- 
 pared with former ages; the present relation of the one 
 to the other; and the inquiry how far an argument may 
 be derived from this view in favor of the divine origin 
 of the Christian system. 
 
 I. The first point is that Christianity, from the nature 
 of the case, is a fixed and unchanging system. It makes 
 no progress in the disclosure of doctrines to be be- 
 lieved; it was perfect as a system of redemption when 
 the Redeemer died, rose, and ascended to heaven; it 
 was complete as a system to be explained and under- 
 stood when the volume of revealed truth was finished 
 on the island of Patmos. No new facts were to be 
 added to the record; no new doctrines were to be re- 
 vealed; no changes were to be made to adjust it to a 
 future condition of the world; nor were the doctrines 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 351 
 
 to be modified to adapt them to new views in science 
 or philosophy. The system for all time to come is to 
 be found in the New Testament; and the system, when 
 the last record was made Gas. was precisely what it 
 will be in the last and most cultivated periods of the 
 world. The work was ended when that volume was 
 completed, for man then had all that he ever would 
 have as constituting the record of Christianity. No 
 new books were to be added; no new prophets or apos- 
 tles were to be sent; no additional work was to be done 
 to supplement the atonement. Whatever consequences 
 may follow from this position, the defender of Chris- 
 tianity is bound to maintain it, and, in the utmost 
 strictness of the expression, the enemy of Christianity 
 may hold him to it. 
 
 It is not necessary to argue this point, for it springs 
 out of the very nature of the system. It is, moreover, 
 fairly implied in the New Testament itself: I believe 
 that the Book of Revelation was the last book of the 
 New Testament that was written, and that it occupies 
 its appropriate place as the closing book in the revela- 
 tion of God to mankind; and that, although the solemn 
 passage with which that book closes undoubtedly had 
 immediate reference to the book itself, yet that it is not 
 improper to regard it as applicable to the entire Bible: 
 “T testify unto every man that heareth the words of 
 the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto 
 these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that 
 are written in this book: and if any man shall take 
 away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God 
 shall take away his part out of the book of life” (Rev., 
 XxiL, 18, 19). 
 
 If this is a true position, the defender of the Christian 
 system can not, as is done in other systems, avail him- 
 
302 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 self of the progress which the world makes to relieve 
 himself of difficulty, and to adjust the system to new 
 discoveries and inventions. A system of astronomy, of 
 chemistry, of anatomy, or of geography, may be adjust- 
 ed from age to age. Erroneous views long entertained 
 in regard to the circulation of the blood, or the move- 
 ments of the heavenly bodies, or the elementary sub- 
 stances of nature, may be detached from the system, 
 and the new views made to occupy their place, though 
 it may require that long-cherished and honored systems 
 shall be abandoned, and names long regarded with rey- 
 erence shall cease to be among those which influence 
 mankind. Such has been, in fact, the progress of the 
 sciences; nor is there any one science that can now be 
 regarded as so fixed that it may not be modified or rev- 
 olutionized by new discoveries. Ifa fact is discovered 
 that is at variance entirely with a prevailing theory of 
 astronomy, anatomy, or chemistry, it is not fatal to the 
 science itself. The system may be at once adjusted to 
 the new fact, and the change constitute an epoch in the 
 advance of the science. Not so, however, in regard to 
 the Bible and to the Christian system. Ifthe world in 
 its progress discloses facts that are irreconcilable with 
 the Bible on just principles of interpretation, it is fatal 
 to its claim as a revelation from God. We can not go 
 back, as in the case of astronomy, and adjust the his- 
 torical or doctrinal statement in the Bible to the new 
 discoveries. 
 
 It follows from these views (@) that the proper work 
 of man in regard to Christianity is to ascertain, by a 
 fair interpretation of language, what the system 4s, 
 not what it showld be. The work of the Christian the- 
 ologian is to sit down to the New Testament simply as 
 an interpreter of language, as the learner in science sits 
 
o 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 353 
 
 down to the study of the works of nature, to learn what 
 nature 7s, not to determine what it should be; to ex- 
 plain a world, not to make a world. The principle sug- 
 gested by Lord Bacon in the first maxim of the Novum 
 Organon* is as applicable to Christianity as it is to 
 nature, and lies as certainly at the foundation of all just 
 views of theology as it does of all just views of science. 
 By the proper study of language, according to the re- 
 ceived laws of exegesis among men, the theologian is to 
 ascertain what the system és, and, having done that, his 
 work is ended. (6) It follows, farther, that the friend 
 of revelation is not at liberty to modify the system; to 
 accommodate it to prevailing theories in philosophy ; 
 or to adjust it to new facts as they shall develop them- 
 selves in the progress of human affairs. No power can 
 change the system but the power which originated it; 
 and the authority to modify it so as to adjust it to hu- 
 man belief, or to facts as they are developed in science, 
 has not been intrusted to mortals. Truth is unaccom- 
 modating and unbending. It will not yield. It can 
 not be made different at one time from what it is at an- 
 other. The proposition that in a right angled triangle 
 the square of the hypothenuse is equal to the sum of 
 the squares on the two sides, is a truth not peculiar to 
 one age or nation; nor to be expressed in one language 
 only; nor to die away among obsolete maxims in the 
 advancing periods of the world; nor to be modified or 
 changed though truths of surpassing magnitude on 
 other subjects are disclosed to human view; nor to be 
 treated as a falsehood though there may be theories to 
 be established that may seem vital to science or to the 
 
 * Homo, natures minister et interpres, tantum facit et intelligit, 
 quantum de nature ordine, re vel mente observaverit; nec amplius 
 scit, aut potest. 
 
354 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 good of mankind. So the Christian theologian is bound 
 to believe in regard to revealed truth; so the unbeliey- 
 ing world may require, in regard to each and every por- 
 tion of the revealed truth “i God, that he shall hold it 
 precisely as it is in the Bible. 
 
 There are, however, one or two remarks which may 
 be made, to show that this rule is not quite as rigid, in 
 its actual application, as it may seem to be. In another 
 part of this Lecture I shall show that, in fact, the rule 
 is as rigid and stern in regard to science as it is in re- 
 spect to theology. 
 
 It is not to be assumed, then, by the Christian or the 
 infidel, that we have in fact, in our creeds and in our 
 interpretation of the Bible, precisely the system which 
 was revealed. That we have the true record in the 
 Bible we are to believe, and the infidel may hold us to 
 that; but that we have the proper tnterpretation of that 
 record is not to be assumed as certain. Christianity 
 has been transmitted to us from a far-distant age. It 
 has come in contact with all the philosophical systems 
 in the world. Its outward form has been much mould- 
 ed by philosophy—much by its alliance with the state. 
 The synods and councils which have determined the 
 creeds of the Church have been, like other assemblies, 
 composed of imperfect men—often of men more under 
 the influence of philosophy than religion; often igno- 
 rant of the plainest rules of exegesis; and often seeking 
 rather to establish a hierarchy than to promote the 
 kingdom of Christ. ‘As a matter of fact, we know that 
 during that long period there is almost no absurdity 
 of doctrine or interpretation which has not been em- 
 braced by the Church; almost no error which has not 
 been sanctioned by synods and councils; almost no 
 truth the belief of which has not exposed him who held 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 355 
 
 it to persecution by the Church itself! Christianity has 
 thus come down to us through a descent of eighteen 
 centuries, collecting in its progress whatever of good 
 or bad there might be that could in any way be made 
 to adhere to it; adopting as its own the opinions in 
 mental philosophy, and the doctrines of science, true or 
 false, which have prevailed in the world; and uniting 
 all in its symbols of faith—taking the Church at large, 
 a vast and monstrous conglomeration of original sacred 
 truth, and of the errors and absurdities which the world 
 has accumulated in the lapse of ages. It is a ship, not 
 now just sailing out of port, fresh, and new, and clean, 
 but one that has sailed afar, and that has collected in 
 distant seas whatever of barnacles and sea-weed that 
 could be made to adhere to it. Those barnacles and 
 that sea-weed must be detached from it if the ship is to 
 be made to traverse safely distant seas again. 
 
 A great part of the work of the Church in modern 
 times has been to detach from it the errors and corrup- 
 tions which it had accumulated in the long period of its 
 history. This was, in fact, the main service which Lu- 
 ther rendered to the Church, restoring it in a great 
 measure to its pristine beauty, purity, and vigor. This 
 is the service which has been rendered by modern sa- 
 cred criticism; this is the work to be done by the ef- 
 forts to secure a correct text of the Bible; this the 
 work to be done by the application of the canons of 
 criticism to the Word of God. 
 
 Luther, indeed, performed a great work; for Chris- 
 tianity in the Protestant form is a different thing from 
 what it was as it had been presented to the world for a 
 thousand years. But we are not to assume that the 
 work was wholly done by him, or that in the Westmin- 
 ster, the Helvetic, and the Savoy Confessions, in the 
 
356 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles, or in the Heidelberg Catechism, 
 we have Christianity precisely as its Author designed 
 to communicate it to mankind. We are not to assume 
 that all the received views in the Church are true 
 views, and are in no manner to be modified. We are 
 not to assume that the texts of Scripture which the 
 Westminster Assembly affixed to the Larger and Short- 
 er Catechisms are all properly applied, and are to be 
 held as proof-texts now in order to “soundness in the 
 faith,” or that the doctrines which they are designed. 
 to defend are, in fact, doctrines of the Scripture at all. 
 We are not to assume that the views held in the 
 Church, even to our own times, in regard to the past 
 records of our earth, or the interpretations which, in 
 defense of those views, the Church has attached to cer- 
 tain statements in the Bible, are therefore correct. It 
 is not to be held that the past interpretations of the 
 first chapter of Genesis are necessarily true; nor are we 
 to assume that the pastor of the Church in Leyden was 
 in error when he said that “God had yet many more 
 truths to break forth out of his holy word.” 
 
 All this is matter of fair inquiry still; and when a 
 new fact is discovered in science that seems to come in 
 conflict with a statement in the Bible, or when an old 
 record in Egypt is deciphered, or a new bone is ex- 
 humed in fossil remains, that seems to carry the history 
 of man back to a remoter period than that assigned by 
 Usher, we are at perfect liberty to inquire whether the 
 common interpretation of the Bible, though received 
 for ages, is the correct interpretation; whether, as in 
 the case of astronomy in the time of Galileo, the Church 
 has not been mistaken in its views on the subject; and 
 whether the Bible, by the fair rules of exegesis, may 
 not be capable of being reconciled with the new discov- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 357 
 
 ery in science, or with the new historical fact that has 
 been disclosed to the world. This “play,” therefore, 
 if I may thus express myself,* is open to the friends 
 of Christianity, while the statement is still held true 
 in its most rigid form that, in itself, it is a fixed 
 and unchangeable system, incapable of progress or 
 change. | 
 
 Il. While Christianity is thus fixed and unchange- 
 able, the world makes progress in science, civilization, 
 and the arts. It is bound by no such rigid laws as 
 those which pertain to an unchangeable system; it 
 holds no theory in philosophy, and no creed in regard 
 to the sciences, which may not be modified and adjust- 
 ed to the highest advances which the race can make. 
 As a matter of fact, the world makes progress. It 
 drops erroneous systems by the way. It readily incor- 
 porates new facts into the systems of science. The old 
 Ptolemaic system, not without a struggle, indeed, gives 
 way to the Copernican system in astronomy, and in the 
 new system there is no difficulty, without changing its 
 character, in assigning its place to each new planet that 
 may be discovered; to any number of comets, shooting 
 stars, and asteroids; to new systems of worlds lying 
 beyond our own planetary system; or to any number 
 of nebulee floating in the distant ether that may be now 
 resolving themselves into worlds. There is nothing, 
 therefore, like a fixed and unchangeable system that 
 seems to bind the race in its career of discovery. In 
 science man seems to be free; in religion he seems to 
 be a fettered slave. 
 
 While this statement, however, is made in regard to 
 science, civilization, and the arts, it 1s important to un- 
 derstand precisely in what sense it is true, in order that 
 
 * “The play of a wheel or piston.” — Webster. 
 
358 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 we may appreciate the manner in which one comes in 
 collision with the other. 
 
 Science, then, in itself, in the highest sense of that 
 term, is as really fixed and unchangeable as Christian- 
 ity. The business of science is not to create, it is to 
 discover. The maxim of Lord Bacon, already referred 
 to, represents man as merely the “minister and inter- 
 preter of nature.” The student of nature does not ere- 
 ate the truths in his department any more than the the- 
 ologian does in his; nor is he any more at liberty to 
 change or modify the facts in his department than the 
 student of the Bible is in his. Moreover, each and all 
 the sciences, using that word in the largest sense, save 
 the science of history, were in themselves as perfect and 
 unchangeable at the beginning of the creation as they 
 are now, and the struggles, the changes, the errors, the 
 advances, the stoppages, the modifications recorded in 
 Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences are quite 
 parallel with the history of theological science—with 
 the toils of plodding theologians; with the delibera- 
 tions of synods and councils; with the breaking out of 
 new light here and there, overthrowing old systems and 
 creeds; with the struggles, the changes, the errors, the 
 advances, the stoppages, the modifications in develop- 
 ing the system of Christian theology as it now exists In 
 its best forms. A treatise on any one of the sciences, 
 if correctly prepared at the beginning of the world, 
 would be a correct treatise now, just as a creed that 
 would have fairly represented Christianity when the 
 volume of inspiration was finished would be a correct 
 creed now. There are no new truths; no new facts; 
 no new principles that have been introduced in the one 
 case any more than in the other. A correct treatise on 
 astronomy, for example, written when “the morning 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 359 
 
 stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for 
 joy,” or when the Chaldean sages looked out on the 
 heavens, and mapped the world above us with strange 
 figures and forms, would be a correct treatise now. The 
 worlds are the same; the laws of their movements are 
 the same; their magnitudes, distances, periods, and rev- 
 olutions are the same. Kepler did not create the great 
 _ laws, the discovery of which has given immortality to 
 his name; Galileo did not bring into existence the sat- 
 ellites of Jupiter; nor did Newton originate the prin- 
 ciple of universal gravitation. So far as known, no 
 new worlds have been added to the system; so far as 
 known, no worlds have been certainly destroyed—it is 
 absolutely certain that no modifications have occurred 
 in the laws by which the system is governed.—A trea- 
 tise on anatomy in the time of Galen, if correct then, 
 would be perfect now. There have been no changes in 
 the structure of man that would demand a revision or 
 a modification of the system. Not one new bone has 
 been added to the human frame; not one new muscle, 
 nerve, or tendon has been laid down; not one new 
 channel has been grooved out for the flowing of the 
 blood. Had Galen given to the world a true theo- 
 ry in his time of the circulation of the blood, it would 
 have been as correct now as is the theory of Harvey. 
 —A treatise on chemistry when, under the Caliphate at 
 Bagdad, the followers of Mohammed were on the point 
 of such great discoveries, would be a correct treatise 
 now. No new substances have been added to the sixty 
 or more of which the universe is composed, nor have 
 there been any new laws in respect to the proportions 
 in which they combine, and the chemical changes which 
 occur in the air, the earth, and the water.—The treatises 
 of Solomon, when “he spake of trees from the cedar-tree 
 
3860 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth 
 out of the wall, and of beasts, and of fowls, and of creep- 
 ing things, and of fishes” (1 Kings, iv., 33), if they were 
 correct treatises then, and stated the true laws in his 
 time in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, would be 
 correct representations in natural history now, and, if 
 they had been preserved, would have rendered needless 
 the toils of Linnzus, Buffon, Cuvier, and Agassiz.—The 
 electric fluid, when it glittered and played on the mast 
 of the ancient mariner, was the same that it is now, 
 when, arrested and guided, it makes its way over hills 
 and plains, and along the bed of the ocean, conveying 
 thought from land to land, and lighting up the world 
 with intelligence-—In like manner, a system of metal- 
 lurgy when Tubal Cain became the “instructor of every 
 artificer in brass and iron” (Gen., iv., 22), or of music in’ 
 the time of Jubal, “the father of all such as handle the 
 harp and the organ” (Gen., iv., 21), or of agriculture in 
 the days of Jabal, “the father of such as dwell in tents, 
 and have cattle” (Gen., iv., 20), would be a correct sys- 
 tem in each department now. The instructions of the 
 schools have added nothing to the principles on which 
 the metals are spread over the earth, nor have they in- 
 creased or diminished the quantity. Mozart and Han- 
 del have added nothing to the laws of the octave, nor 
 has Liebig introduced one new substance as entering 
 into scientific agriculture, or modified one on which 
 success depends. 
 
 Yet, in the ordinary sense of the word science, the 
 world does make progress, and in reference to science 
 as known, and to theories which are regarded as just 
 expositions of nature, the world is immeasurably in ad- 
 vance of what it was when the Gospel was revealed to 
 mankind. All the old treatises on science have passed 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. ~ 361 
 
 away. They are valuable now only as marking the 
 progress of the race, and as enabling us to compare the 
 present with the past. No one feels bound to defend 
 these ancient expositions of nature as the Christian 
 feels bound to defend the ancient records of his faith in 
 the Bible; no one is charged with heresy in science if 
 he discards the teachings of the ancients altogether. 
 The friend of science is free. He is bound by no an- 
 cient exposition of nature; nor does he hesitate, on the 
 discovery of a new fact in nature—Zin astronomy, in 
 anatomy, or in chemistry—to lay aside at once all that 
 in the received systems is inconsistent with that fact, 
 and to set himself at work to adjust the system to that 
 new revelation. He does not create the fact, and, there- 
 fore, he does not create the science; he modifies the 
 System as received so as to be in accordance with that 
 fact, and allows it to exert its full influence in forming 
 the opinions of mankind in all time to come. He dis- 
 covers, he does not make. Columbus discovered Amer- 
 ica, he did not create it, and the fact of its existence was 
 the same before he discovered it as afterward, and 
 would have been the same if he had not lived. Adams 
 and Le Verrier indicated the place of an unknown plan- 
 et in the heavens, they did not create it. Its existence 
 was the same before they made it known as afterward, 
 and would have been the same if they had not suggest- 
 ed the fact of its existence to mankind. From the be- 
 ginning of the creation, that distant star had walked its 
 rounds on perhaps the outer limit of our solar system, 
 unobserved by men before, but, when disclosed, men 
 forthwith set themselves to adjust the astronomical 
 system to the fact that there was such*a star, and that 
 its movements should be allowed to explain and mod- 
 ify existing views. 
 
 Q 
 
362 LECTURES: ON THE 
 
 Thus science advances. Not that it changes.. Not 
 that it has any new facts. Not that new matter is 
 created, or that new properties are given to the parti- 
 cles that compose it, but that the original great laws 
 and facts of science, in themselves as fixed and un- 
 changeable as were the truths of the Christian system 
 when the New Testament was completed, are arranged, 
 explained, and properly located in the respective sys- 
 tems of science, displacing the errors of the past, and 
 advancing to that state where “man, the minister and 
 interpreter of nature,” shall have brought the systems 
 of science, as far as the human powers will permit, into 
 harmony with the system as it reposed eternally in the 
 mind of the Creator. 
 
 Ill. Such being the facts in regard to the two sys- 
 tems, it was inevitable that they should come into col- 
 lision, and that they should be liable, at any time, to 
 cross each other. The nature of that collision must de- 
 pend much on the false views which are at any time 
 attached to the Christian system—as the sailing of the 
 ship, before referred to, would be much affected by the 
 barnacles and sea-weed attached to it—and by the 
 views of philosophy and science that prevail at any 
 time in the world. The work of adjusting the two, 
 therefore, must vary from age to age, as the nature of 
 the conflict between the two must vary in different pe- 
 riods of the world. The battle, under a new form, may 
 be to be refought in each successive generation. The 
 triumph of Christianity at any one time is by no means 
 a@ permanent triumph, or even, in itself, a proof of per- 
 manent triumph at all; and the apparent triumph, at 
 any time, of infidelity is by no means a demonstration 
 of permanent and ultimate victory. Celsus, Porphyry, 
 and Julian act their part, and disappear; Hobbes, 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 363 
 
 Chubb, and Morgan follow, and then vanish from the 
 stage; Volney, Gibbon, Hume, attack the system, and 
 retire from the conflict; Strauss and Renan, Hegel 
 and Comte, follow after. A host of scientific warriors 
 rushes on the arena for an attack on the religion that 
 is fixed and unchangeable, deriving their means of at- ° 
 tack from a system that is as fixed and unchangeable as 
 Christianity itself, and the warfare assumes new forms, 
 and is to be fought with new weapons. Whether these 
 two systems, equally fixed and unchangeable, are really 
 in conflict, or will be found ultimately to coincide and 
 harmonize, is the question which is now before this age, 
 and which is, perhaps, to be before the world in the de- 
 velopments of future ages. It is too early to determine 
 with absolute certainty that the two will ultimately 
 agree. The Christian theologian believes assuredly 
 that it will be so; the scientific skeptic is not less con- 
 fident that the prospect of ultimate harmony, if it ever 
 existed, has now vanished forever. 
 
 For my purpose in these Lectures, it is important to 
 designate, in few words, the varying nature of this con- 
 flict; for it has not always been the same, nor is it like- 
 ly to be always the same that it is now. 
 
 Historically, the conflict may be divided into three 
 periods: from the time when the Gospel was first 
 preached to the age when it became permanently es- 
 tablished in the world; the Middle Ages—the times 
 when, amidst much darkness in science, and much error 
 in religion, the human mind was struggling into light; 
 and. the present age. 
 
 In the first of these periods, the nature of the conflict 
 was marked and definite, and the conflict, in that form, 
 is never to be renewed. The systems with which the 
 Gospel came into conflict have passed away, and are 
 not to be revived. 
 
364 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 That conflict was between Christianity and Judaism 
 on the one hand, and Christianity and the Greek and 
 Roman philosophy on the other. 
 
 In Judea, Christianity came into collision with relig- 
 ion alone. The Jews had no literature besides their 
 ’ sacred books; they had no science, no philosophy. Be- 
 yond what is in their sacred records they have contrib- 
 uted nothing of value to the progress of mankind, in 
 war or in peace; and the collision, therefore, in Judea 
 was wholly on the subject of religion. The views 
 
 which were then regarded as antagonistic to Christian- — 
 
 ity have ceased to influence the world beyond the small 
 number that constitutes the remnant of the Hebrew 
 people, and the conflicts which Christian apostles waged 
 with the Jewish doctors have ceased forever. 
 
 In Greece and Rome the conflict was of a different 
 nature. It was partly with religion; partly with priest- 
 ly power; partly with the state; partly with philoso- 
 phy. It is only in the latter aspect that the subject de- 
 mands notice now—the conflict with philosophy. It 
 was, in fact, a conflict with “phzlosophy,” not with sci- 
 ence. The Greeks had little science, the Romans less. 
 It is not too much to say that in respect to the physical 
 sciences, the most eminent of the Greek philosophers 
 would not have been qualified for admission~into the 
 lowest class of any American college ;* nor have they 
 contributed any thing that now enters into the instruc- 
 tions in our laboratories or schools. The conflict, there- 
 fore, in Greece, and the same was true in Rome, was 
 with an acute and subtle metaphysical philosophy. It 
 was not on questions started in the laboratory or the 
 observatory, but in the Academy and the Porch. In 
 Juda it was substantially about the ‘atonement; in 
 
 * Compare Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. i., b. i. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 365 
 
 Greece it was the whole question about the elevation 
 of the race. The Greek philosopher knew of but one 
 way of reforming mankind, of meeting human ills, of 
 elevating the race, of obtaining the favor of the gods. 
 It was by mental culture; by development; by instruc- 
 tion; by conformity to a just standard of morals. Chris- 
 tianity proclaimed that in this way man could neither 
 be elevated, nor obtain the divine favor, nor. be pre- 
 pared for a future world, but that the entire hope of 
 the race for reformation, elevation, and salvation was 
 in the doctrine of Christ crucified. That was foolish- 
 ness to the Greek. It was not on the line of his views 
 in regard to the means of elevating men, and he spurned 
 and rejected the system. 
 
 Those old controversies have passed away. All that 
 there was in the philosophy of Greece that opposed 
 Christianity has ceased to influence mankind, and that 
 philosophy will not be revived. Celsus and Porphyry 
 have done their work, and they did it well; and except 
 as they are exhumed to illustrate the history of the 
 Church, or are explored by some theological teacher 
 who regards all wisdom as found among the “fathers,” 
 the whole has gone into the “extinct controversies” of 
 the past. 
 
 The second of these periods embraced the Middle 
 Ages; the times when, amidst much darkness in sci- 
 ence, and much error in religion, the human mind was 
 struggling into light. The history of this is a history 
 of nearly all the persecutions under the Papacy. The 
 peculiarity of this period, so far as there was a collision 
 between Christianity and science, civilization, and the 
 arts, was, that the Church adopted certain interpreta- 
 tions of the Scriptures as infallible; that it regarded 
 the Bible as making statements on the structure of the 
 
366 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 universe, as well as on the plan of salvation, which were 
 equally to be received as a part of the creed of Chris- 
 tendom, and which were to be defended in the same 
 manner as any other articles of the creed of the Church; 
 that it claimed jurisdiction over all the subjects of 
 knowledge, as it did over the wealth and power of 
 newly-discovered countries ; and that to doubt the au- 
 thority of the Church on subjects of science was a here- 
 sy of the same nature as to doubt the doctrine of the 
 Trinity or the Incarnation. Each successive discovery 
 in science, therefore, brought the Church into contact 
 with the world, and led to persecution. The collision 
 was not with Christianity as such, but with Christian- 
 ity as it was embodied in the prevailing interpretation 
 of the Scriptures, and in the articles of a church claim- 
 ing to be infallible. ‘Thus, in the case of Galileo, his 
 offense in holding the doctrines of the Copernican sys- 
 tem was not against the Bible, for the Bible, properly 
 interpreted, has revealed nothing on the subject, but 
 was against the znterpretation put on the Bible by the 
 Geren: The Church had adopted the Ptolemaic sys- 
 tem of astr onomy, and to call the truth of that system 
 in question was, in the judgment of the Church, an at- 
 tack on the Bible itself Thus, through this long and 
 gloomy tract. of ages, science struggled in dark and ob- 
 scure places, restrained and intimidated by the fear of 
 a collision with the the Church, as freedom struggled 
 every where at the same time, restrained and awed by 
 the fear of the papal power. The one was held in 
 check as really as the other. Here and there, a solitary 
 individual, like Roger Bacon, pursued his studies alone., 
 Each new discovery involved the danger of a conflict 
 with the Church; each advance made was imperiled by 
 the apprehension of impinging on some article of faith. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 367 
 
 Nature was explored with the apprehension of a revela- 
 tion there that would be in conflict with the infallible 
 revelation as interpreted by the Church, and each new 
 discovery was made by stealth, and with the fear of the 
 rack or the stake before the eyes. Science emerged into 
 light and freedom only when those shackles were burst 
 asunder, and men acted on the idea that science was to 
 be pursued in an independent manner, and that the ob- 
 servation of the stars, and the examination of the com- 
 ponent elements of matter, were not to be restrained by 
 any interpretations which had been affixed to the Bible. 
 The world was slow to learn this. In fact, the lesson 
 is not yet wholly learned. The investigations of mod- 
 ern astronomy, as in the time of Galileo, have been pur- 
 sued in the face of an extensively prevailing belief that 
 these disclosures are against the teachings of revela- 
 tion; and all the investigations of geology have been 
 made, on the one hand, by a hope that the results would 
 ‘be found to be in conflict with the Bible, and, on the 
 other, by a fear that it would be so. Geology and as- 
 tronomy have achieved their triumphs only by setting 
 aside interpretations of the Bible which have been re- 
 ceived in the Church for ages; and the inquiries which 
 are now pursued in regard to the work of creation, the 
 antiquity of man upon the earth, the origin of the races 
 of men, are pursued on the one hand with the hope, and 
 on the other with the fear, that the result will be found 
 to be in conflict with the teachings of the Bible. It has 
 been, and is, a slow work for man to learn that his ¢nter- 
 pretation of the Bible is not necessarily the teaching of 
 the Bible; that to detach a false interpretation from 
 the Word of God is not necessarily an assault on the 
 Bible itself, and is not to be regarded as heresy. 
 
 We have fallen, in the third period, on other times. 
 
368 LECTURES ON THE , 
 
 A new era is opened upon the world, and Christianity 
 and the world now come into collision in a form wholly 
 different from the collision in the times of the apostles 
 and in the Middle Ages. The defender of Christianity 
 has a different work to do from what he had in the time 
 of Porphyry and Celsus; in the time of Morgan and 
 Chubb; in the time of Volney, Gibbon, and Hume. To 
 the Church at large; to the Christian ministry ; and to 
 those especially whom I am called to address in these 
 Lectures—those preparing for the ministry—nothing 
 can be of greater importance than to understand the 
 nature of the conflict which is to be before the Church 
 in the next age. , 
 
 A few remarks here seem to be necessary to place 
 this part of the subject in a proper light: 
 
 (1.) It is, as before intimated, always a fair question, 
 when there is an apparent collision between the Bible 
 and science, whether the ‘collision is, in fact, between 
 the scientific truth and the Bidle, or between that truth 
 and the prevailing and received interpretation of the 
 Bible. The one is by no means to be assumed as sy- 
 nonymous with the other. To the utmost extent which 
 the proper laws of interpreting language will allow, the 
 friend of Christianity is to be permitted to apply those 
 laws to determine whether the received interpretation 
 of the Bible is the necessary and the fair one. The 
 Bible is not, indeed, to be made a “nose of wax,” but it 
 is equally true that the infidel is not to be permitted to 
 assume that the interpretation which he puts on the 
 Bible is the true one, or that any interpretation found 
 in the creeds, or in treatises of theology, is necessarily 
 the correct one. The whole question abdéut the integ- 
 rity of the text; about the agreement of manuscripts; 
 about the changes in the use of words; about the mean- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 369 
 
 ing of language as modified in any particular country, 
 among any particular people, or at any particular time, 
 is a fair and open question—a question of simple znéer- 
 pretation, as it is In inquiring into the meaning of Ho- 
 mer or Herodotus. To the utmost extent to which the 
 fair canons of criticism are applicable to any ancient 
 book, the friend of the Bible may avail himself of those 
 canons to detach a false interpretation from the Word 
 of God—to remove another barnacle from the ship that 
 has, in long voyages, vexed many seas. Even if, which 
 is almost demonstrably impossible, the followers of 
 Lepsius, Gliddon, Nott, and Bunsen, could establish the 
 fact that man has been upon the earth for a period 
 of twenty thousand years, it would still be an open 
 question whether the Bible, by fair interpretation, 
 teaches the contrary, and whether the common inter- 
 pretation of the Church, though received for ages, may 
 not have been founded on erroneous data in determin- 
 ing what the Bible teaches on the subject, or whether 
 it teaches-any thing. There is, indeed, a limit to this; 
 but it is a limit to be determined in the case of the 
 Bible, as in the case of any other ancient book, by a 
 proper application of the rules of exegesis. 
 
 (2.) The warfare in our time between Christianity 
 and the world in respect to science, civilization, and the 
 arts, has changed. The old modes of attacking the 
 Bible have been abandoned, and the old modes of de- 
 fending it are therefore to be abandoned. On all mat- 
 ters pertaining to the progress of our race there are 
 many “extinct controversies”—old volcanoes that have 
 been burned out—leaving nothing but scorise and ashes, - 
 and on no subject is this more true than on the subject 
 of theology. Around those extinct volcanoes men wan- 
 der now safe, but with nothing to relieve the desola- 
 
 Q 2 
 
370 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tion. Time was when all was commotion there. The 
 mountain heaved; the flames belched forth; the sky 
 was lurid; rivers of burning lava flowed in every direc- 
 tion. All was consumed. Nor city, nor hamlet, nor 
 tree, nor shrub, nor flower, nor spire of grass was 
 spared; and perhaps no living thing will ever grow 
 again on the fatal spot. So with many of the old con- 
 troversies in philosophy; in science; in religion. What 
 could more resemble the scoriz of such an ancient vol- 
 cano than the huge tomes of the schoolmen? What 
 could more resemble such a volcano in action than the 
 heat, and fire, and zeal of Thomas Aquinas, and John 
 Duns Scotus? What shrub, tree, flower, or living thing 
 can be culled from those blackened remains ? 
 
 It is a material point thus gained when one is gird- 
 ing on the armor to fight the battles of his own age, to 
 know exactly where he starts, and what is precisely the 
 nature of the warfare in which he is to engage. It is 
 much to know what is settled, and what is open still. 
 That soldier now. would spend his time to very little 
 purpose who should furbish some piece of ancient ar- 
 _mor; who should see that his helmet, and his shield, 
 and his greaves, and his spear were in good condition ; 
 or who should, as in other days, incase his horse in ar- 
 mor, and move into battle reflecting around him the 
 rays of the sun. Those ancient suits of armor for horses 
 and men do well in old baronial halls, for they have an 
 appropriate place there as memorials of other days and 
 other men, as old volumes on extinct controversies have 
 an appropriate place in the alcoves of vast ‘libraries— 
 memorials of the past. | 
 
 There have been battles in regard to Christianity 
 in its collision with the world which have been well 
 fought, and which are not to be renewed in our time, 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 371 
 
 or ever onward. Porphyry, in his day, had his field; 
 Celsus his; Julian his. In neither case was it science 
 or sacred criticism. It was the ancient philosophy as 
 then held, coming into contact with a new religion— 
 with Christianity. Those men did their work well. 
 They did all that acute philosophers, sustained, in the 
 case of Julian, by the might of imperial power, could do 
 to prevent the spread of the new system. That battle 
 is not to be fought over again. The philosophy which 
 they held, like the men themselves, has long since passed 
 away, to be revived on earth no more. So, in his time, 
 Volney had his field, and he did his work well. Seated 
 amidst the “ruins” of ages, and surveying the empires 
 and systems that have passed away, he inferred that in 
 the course of events there must be a succession of 
 “ruins” to the end of time, and that the existing em- 
 pires and systems of philosophy and religion—Chris- 
 tianity among the number—would be added to the 
 ruins of the past, and be numbered among extinct sys- 
 tems. No one could do his work better than he has 
 done, and that attempt will not be made again. Thom- 
 as Paine, in his time, had his field, and he did his work 
 well. With talents, indeed, eminently fitted to be use- 
 ful when vindicating the “Rights of Men;” with a 
 power of noble language almost without a parallel for 
 popular appeal,* but, also, with a still more unequaled 
 
 * Chief Justice Marshall says of him (Life of Washington, vol. ii., p. 
 399) in relation to the causes which led to the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, ‘‘ Many essays appeared in the papers calculated to extend 
 these opinions; and a pamphlet under the signature of Common 
 Sense, written by Thomas Paine, an Englishman, who had lately come 
 over to America, had particular influence. He possessed a style and 
 manner of saying bold things, singularly well fitted to act on the pub- 
 lic mind, to enlist every feeling with him; and very often, especially 
 in times when men were greatly agitated, to seize on the judgment 
 itself.’ 
 
Suz LECTURES ON THE 
 
 acquaintance with the Billingsgate of the English 
 tongue, and in this surpassed by none, he undertook to 
 drive the Bible from the world by ribaldry and abuse. 
 That battle has been fought. Whoever attempts here- 
 rafter to attack Christianity in that manner, will find 
 that the work has been already better done than he can 
 do it himself, and that the great point has been settled 
 forever that religion is not to be driven from the world 
 by scorn, ribaldry, and vulgarity. In his day, too, Vol- 
 taire had his field—satire, learning, poetry, philosophy. 
 He did his work well. Who is to surpass hin? Who 
 is to equal him? Who shail hope to succeed in de- 
 stroying Christianity by such weapons when the great 
 Frenchman has failed? What can remain in that line 
 but to reproduce his-criticisms, to republish his philoso- 
 phy, to repeat his sarcasms? Mr. Hume had his field, 
 and he has done his work well. By most subtle soph- 
 istry; by great calmness; by a spirit of apparent can- 
 dor; by perplexing and involving a subject so as, even 
 to this day, to exercise the ingenuity of the world to 
 show where he was wrong, when thé great body of men 
 feel that he was wrong, he attempted to show—to prove 
 —that a miracle could not be demonstrated to have 
 been wrought. Where Thomas Brown and Dugald 
 Stewart have exhausted their powers to detect the 
 sophistry, leaving it doubtful whether it has been de- 
 tected, and where many a theologian has attempted to 
 show that it «was sophistry, and yet has left the impres- 
 sion of Mr. Hume’s argument more deeply imbedded in 
 the mind than it was before, it can not be supposed 
 that that argument will be presented in a more em- 
 barrassing form, or that, as a metaphysical argument — 
 against miracles, it is to gain any new strength in com- 
 ing ages. Mr. Gibbon had Ais field, and well he has 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 373 
 
 worked it. His province was history, and his investi- 
 gations led him, as a skeptic, as he probably intended 
 they should, over the entire period when Christianity, 
 from the feeblest beginning, made its way over the Ro- 
 man world, and “sat down on the throne of the Ce- 
 sars;” when, during the long and eventful ages of the 
 decline of the empire, Christianity was seen moulding 
 society, directing wars, founding empires, modifying 
 opinions, changing the arts of life, introducing, revolu- 
 tions into manners, dress, dwellings, schools; when it 
 controlled the government and influenced the people; 
 when it founded monasteries and colleges; when it 
 poured its embattled legions on the Holy Land, and 
 when it had identified itself with all the forms of civil- 
 ization in Europe. It was Mr. Gibbon’s task to show, 
 contrary to the opinion of the Christian world, and the 
 general judgment of mankind, that all this could be, 
 and yet the religion not be of God. He did his work 
 well. He did not leave it to be alleged, even by the 
 friends of Christianity, that his aim was to falsify his- 
 tory for the sake of skepticism. As a historian he 
 was among the most true, and honest, and faithful of 
 men. There is not the slightest evidence that his skep- 
 ticism, bitter as it was, ever led him, in a single in- 
 stance, to pervert or falsify a fact, however much it 
 might be opposed to his own views on the subject of 
 religion, or however much ingenuity it might require 
 to escape, as a skeptic, from the legitimate inferences 
 from the fact. By unwearied study; by great learning ; 
 by an unrivaled command of language; by patient toil; 
 by a comprehensive grasp of his great subject, he has 
 placed himself at the head of historians, and from the 
 time of Thucydides down to the present age there has 
 not been a man more upright, stern, honest, unbending, 
 
374 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 in recording the facts of history. Yet, faithful as to his 
 facts, he traversed the entire field with a sneer on his 
 countenance, and with a purpose to make the facts as 
 they existed do all that they could be made to do to 
 destroy the confidence of mankind in the divine origin 
 of the Christian religion. No one hereafter, if he at- 
 tempts to do that work at all, will do it so well, and in 
 that method of destroying faith in the Christian relig- 
 ion no more remains to be accomplished. 
 
 IV. These controversies have passed away, and these 
 methods of attempting to destroy Christianity are fast 
 ceasing to exert an influence on mankind. The col- 
 lision now between Christianity and the world is sub- 
 stantially a new form of collision; the attack is from a 
 new quarter, and with new weapons; the questions in- 
 volved are deeper than those with which the Church 
 has heretofore grappled; the results of the conflict, so 
 far as we can see, are to be final. 
 
 The points on which Christianity is now coming into 
 collision with the world in its present stage of progress 
 in science, civilization, and the arts, are principally the 
 following : | 
 
 First. The inspiration of the Bible—the question 
 whether a “book-revelation” is possible, and whether, 
 if possible, the Bible is such a revelation, and is in- 
 fallible. 
 
 Second. The antiquity of the human race—the ques- 
 tion whether, according to the commonly received 
 teaching of the Scriptures, man has been upon the 
 earth about six thousand years, or whether his history 
 stretches back for a period of ten or twenty thousand 
 years, or to even a remoter period. > 
 
 Third. The origin of the race—whether the different 
 types of men upon the earth have had a common ori- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 375 
 
 gin, and have been derived from a single pair, or 
 whether, as is maintained in regard to the inferior an- 
 imals, men have sprung up in different centres, either 
 as developed from inferior orders of beings, or from in- 
 dependent created “heads” of the different varieties 
 upon the earth—the Caucasian, the Mongolian, the 
 Kthiopian, and the American; in other words, whether 
 the varieties in the human family can be reconciled 
 with the undoubted doctrine of the Bible that the 
 whole human family is descended from a single pair. 
 
 Fourth. The whole question of miracles— whether 
 miracles are possible; whether a record of a miracle 
 could be believed; or whether the laws of nature are 
 so fixed and unchanging that there never has been, and 
 never can be, sufficient evidente of the direct interposi- 
 tion of the divine power to justify the belief that any 
 events have occurred in the history of our globe that 
 are not traceable to those laws, or that those laws have 
 ever been set aside. 
 
 Whether, in this course of Lectures, any remarks have 
 been made to throw light on these points, or to assist 
 those who are to be defenders of the truth in their 
 studies, it is not for me to express any opinion. The 
 consideration of these points has, either directly or in- 
 directly, entered largely into these Lectures, and these 
 points have, in fact, been constantly before my own 
 mind in preparing them. It can not be assumed now 
 that they are definitely and forever settled on either 
 side, so that the discussions on them can be ranked 
 among the “extinct controversies.” ‘They are to be 
 among the active subjects of controversy and inquiry 
 in the next age, and, in order that their importance and 
 their bearing on the whole subject. of Christianity may 
 be perceived—a bearing well understood by the ene- 
 
376 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 mies of Christianity, a few additional remarks may not 
 be improper. 
 
 For the first of them—the inspiration of the Bible. 
 It is clear that the whole question about a revelation 
 at all, and about Christianity in particular, depends on 
 this. Nothing can be plainer than that the Bible 
 claims to be a supernatural revelation from God; that 
 its teachings are above human teachings; that the real 
 author of the book is the Holy Ghost speaking through 
 inspired men; and that its teachings constitute an in- 
 fallible guide for man. Deny this; deny that it is in- 
 spired in any other sense than Homer, or Ossian, or 
 Shakspeare were inspired, and it is clear that the book 
 at once loses its authority, and the system which it con- 
 tains is placed on the same level as the system in the 
 KXoran, the Zendavesta, or the Shasters. 
 
 For the second of these—the antiquity of man upon 
 the earth—it is plain, also, that the question may as- 
 sume such a form as to involve the whole question of 
 revealed religion. It may, indeed, be a fair question 
 whether the Scripture record extends back precisely to 
 the period of six thousand years, or whether, ¢f it were 
 demonstrated that man had been upon the earth ten or 
 even twenty thousand years, the proper interpretation 
 of the Bible would be found to be consistent with such 
 a fact; but, beyond all question, there zs a limit, prob- 
 ably much within the twenty thousand years of man’s 
 residence upon the earth, according to the Bible. The 
 Bible is a history—a history of man. It professes to 
 go up to the beginning—the period of his first appear- 
 ance upon the earth. It traces the origin of nations; 
 records the dispersions of the race; accounts for the 
 origin of languages. In that history of living beings— 
 of man—there can be no such long periods of suc- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 377 
 
 cessive repose, of slow development, of destruction, of 
 new creations, and of sweeping off entire races from the 
 earth, as occur in the mere geological history of the 
 world, when an interval, unexplained, of a thousand, or 
 a million of years, is scarcely to be taken into the ac- 
 count. In other words, by no possible propriety, by no 
 fair rules of interpretation, can the liberty be allowed 
 in regard to the history of man which is conceded on 
 all hands to the student of geology in reference to the 
 transformations on and within the earth before man ap- 
 peared on it. The earth itself, so far as the account in 
 the Bible goes, may have existed any number of mil- 
 lions of ages; man, according to the Bible, is a recent 
 visitant to this world, and the time is not remote in the 
 past when he was formed by his Creator to occupy a 
 world made ready for his abode. 
 
 For the third of these points—the question whether 
 the human race is derived from a single pair—it is man- 
 ifest that the whole question of the truth of revelation 
 and of redemption turns on this. The Bible records 
 the creation of a single pair, and no other. It records 
 the migrations and wanderings of the descendants of 
 that one pair to all parts of the world, and of no others 
 (Gen., X,). It treats the race as one. It regards that 
 one pair as the head of the entire race, and afticens that 
 the disobedience of that one pair marated all the dwell- 
 ers on the earth as one race—not the Caucasian race 
 only, or the Mongolian, the African, or the American, 
 but the entire race. ‘In Adam all die” (1 Cor., xv., 22). 
 “ By one man sin entered into the world, and death by 
 sin” (Rom., v., 12). “By one man’s disobedience many 
 —oi ro\\ol—the many—were made sinners” (Rom., v., 
 19). These expressions comprehend the race; and the 
 entire doctrine of depravity and of death, according to 
 
378 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the Bible, is identified with the fact that there was a 
 single pair at the head of the race. The same is the 
 Scripture doctrine in regard to redemption. The race, 
 according to that plan, is one—one in origin; one in 
 apostasy; one in guilt; one in death. The work of 
 redemption is not Mongolian, or Caucasian, or Ethio- 
 pian, but it pertains to man as man. In redemption, as 
 in the fall, there is one Head—the counterpart of the 
 other, each acting for the race. “As in Adam all die, 
 even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor., xv., 
 22). “Since by man came death, by man came also the 
 resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor., xv., 21). “As by one 
 man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the 
 obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Rom., 
 v., 19). In reference to this point, also, it is certain that 
 it is indispensable to proper faith in the Bible. By no 
 fair rules of exegesis; by no possible torture of lan- 
 guage, can the teachings of the Bible be made consist- 
 ent with the belief that the different “races” of men 
 upon the earth have each had a separate origin. “God 
 hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell 
 on all the face of the earth” (Acts, xvii, 26). This fact is 
 not only affirmed, but every where implied, and well do 
 the men who are assailing it understand its bearing on 
 the question of the reception or rejection of the Bible 
 in the world. 
 
 As to the fourth point—the question whether mira- 
 cles are possible, this also is vital to ail faith in the 
 Bible. Mr. Hume understood this, and attempted, by a 
 most ingenious metaphysical argument, to put the ques- 
 tion about miracles, and faith in the Bible, to rest for- 
 ever. It comes before the Church and the world now 
 in a different form; not less difficult to be met; more 
 likely to affect scientific men; more likely to be pop- 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 379 
 
 ular. The doctrine that miracles are impossible as held 
 now is founded on the alleged stability of the laws of 
 nature. At first, in science, nothing seems more fluctu- 
 ating or unsettled than those laws. The varying sea- 
 sons; the clouds; the storms of ocean; the march of dis- 
 ease; the wantonness of the lightning’s flash; the play 
 of the aurora borealis; the irregularity of the term of 
 human life; the movements of comets and meteors, all 
 these seemed to be independent of any fixed laws, and 
 these movements were explained in the early periods 
 of the world, as Comte (Positive Philosophy) has stated, 
 by the supposition of supernatural agencies. Silently 
 and gradually, however, these irregularities have been 
 reduced to order and law, and man has approached, - 
 what Comte regards as the last stage, the Ultima Thule 
 of science, the Positive philosophy :—the point where 
 no supernatural agency is to be recognized; where no 
 events are to be traced to an “unknown metaphysical 
 cause ;” but where all that is known—all that exists— 
 is an antecedent and a sequent, with no real causation, 
 and, as far as known, no God.* That, apart from such 
 speculations as those of the Positive philosophy, there 
 is a tendency in our age to this result, there can be no 
 doubt. Thus far in the progress of science, the tenden- 
 ey has been, undoubtedly, to find fixed and unchanging 
 laws prevailing, and the object of science is to ascertain 
 and apply those laws. The studies of the astronomer 
 proceed on this supposition; the investigations in the 
 laboratory; the arts of navigation and agriculture ; 
 even the doctrines of tides, and winds, and storms, pro- 
 ceed on the supposition of the existence of unvarying 
 
 * See the elaborate and very able article on ‘*‘ The Positive Philos- 
 ophy of Auguste Comte,” by J. S. Mill, Esq., in the Westminster Re- 
 view for April, 1865. 
 
380 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 laws. By all, therefore, that there is in such a tenden- 
 cy to universality; by all that is done to reduce that 
 which in former ages seemed to be irregular to the con- 
 trol of fixed laws; by all the affirmations which scien- 
 tific men make that the laws of nature are fixed and 
 unchanging, there is an approximation, consciously or 
 unconsciously, to the conclusion that miracles have 
 never occurred ; that all the well-established facts which 
 have taken place in the history of our world are reduc- 
 ible to the operation of fixed laws; and that all the al- 
 leged facts that can not thus be reduced are to be 
 classed among myths and fables. 
 
 And yet it is clear that no man can receive the Bible 
 who does not believe in the exertion of miraculous 
 power in our world. From the beginning of the book 
 to the end, it proceeds on the supposition that God has 
 often interfered in human affairs by his own direct 
 power; that there have been cases innumerable where 
 all there was in the case was an event, and the will of 
 God behind it. The reader of the Bible walks in the 
 midst of signs and wonders. He is in a supernatural 
 world. He is in the constant presence of Deity—God, 
 in his sovereignty creating the world itself; forming 
 man upon it; conversing with man; giving law in calm 
 conversation, and amidst thunders and tempests; res- 
 cuing his people from bondage by his own power; mak- 
 ing a path for them through the sea; overwhelming 
 their enemies; shaking the nations; sending conquerors 
 and prophets supernaturally endowed, until the whole 
 is consummated by the appearance of the God incar- 
 nate—giving sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf; 
 healing all manner of disease, and raising up the dead 
 —himself raised from the graye to life, and borne up to 
 heaven. Who can believe in Jesus Christ who does 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 381 
 
 not believe in miracles? Who can believe that the 
 Bible has the slightest claim on the faith of mankind if 
 it is maintained that the laws of nature are so fixed 
 and unchanging that a miracle is impossible ? 
 
 V. It remains to inquire, in accordance with the main 
 design of this Lecture, and in the conclusion of the 
 whole subject, what is the relation of Christianity to 
 the present stage of the world, in its progress in sci- 
 ence, civilization, and the arts? 
 
 In this part of the inquiry, it must be assumed, as 
 was stated in the beginning of this Lecture, that when 
 the Gospel was announced to mankind it had truths of 
 great importance to communicate in advance of what 
 the world then possessed. Assuming this, the inquiry 
 now before us presents itself in two forms: (1) whether 
 the Gospel is, in this respect, still in advance of the 
 world, or whether the world has so come up to it, or 
 gone ahead of it, as to supersede it; and (2) whether, 
 admitting that it is still in advance of the world in its 
 disclosures, it has kept up with the race in its means of 
 propagating itself, so as to be able, in this respect, to 
 maintain its advanced position. These inquiries do not 
 differ so materially that they can not be pursued to- 
 gether. 
 
 (1.) The first material point in this part of the sub- 
 ject is, that while the world has made great progress in 
 other things, it has made none whatever on the subjects 
 which constitute the peculiar teachings of Christianity. 
 In reference to what the Gospel claims as its own, the 
 world has struck out no light; has removed no diffi- 
 culty; has answered none of the questions which, in 
 past ages, have so perplexed mankind. The effort to 
 find out a knowledge of God; to find a medium of ac- 
 cess to him; to find a method by which the tace may 
 
382 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 be elevated, and to find evidence of the immortality of 
 the soul, seems to have exhausted itself in Greece. The 
 Greek mind, as has been remarked before, was perhaps 
 better fitted for these inquiries than any other that God 
 has made; the Greek taste sought and found gratifica- 
 tion in these inquiries; the Greek language afforded a 
 better medium for pursuing those inquiries than any 
 other language which has been spoken among men. If, 
 of all the tribes of men, we were to select that to which 
 we should most confidently intrust the question, How 
 much man by nature can find out about God? we 
 should unhesitatingly select the Greek mind as best fit- 
 ted to solve the problem. | 
 
 It is not undervaluing the science of astronomy, of 
 anatomy, of chemistry, of natural philosophy, of geol- 
 ogy, to say that, to this hour, they have made no dis- 
 closures on those points which so occupied the atten- 
 tion of the ancients, and on which Christianity assumed 
 that it had truths in advance of all that the world had 
 known. The astronomer points his glass to the heay- 
 ens; penetrates the deep blue ether; reveals worlds 
 and systems far beyond the reach of. the naked eye; 
 discerns nebulze lying behind nebule in the vast re- 
 gions of unmeasured space, but does he see God? Does 
 he look upon his throne? Does he tell us, however 
 long or intently he may gaze, whether God is a merci- 
 ful Being; whether there is a plan of redemption for 
 the fallen and the lost ; whether there is a way of peace 
 
 for a troubled conscience ; whether the soul is immor- 
 tal; whether . 
 
 ‘*'The dread of something after death— 
 The undiscovered country from whose bourn 
 No traveler returns,”’ 
 
 shall make us 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 383 
 
 ‘Rather bear those ills we have, 
 Than fly to others that we know not of ?” 
 
 Does he answer these questions so that the mind of 
 Plato—so that the mind of Hamlet would be calm? 
 Forever may he look through that tube, and not a ray 
 of light will visit his soul from those distant worlds 
 about what man is so anxious to learn, and in respect 
 to that on which he feels himself so much in the dark. 
 Who goes to the astronomer to learn how a sinner may 
 be saved, and how he himself may be prepared to die? 
 In the laboratory of the chemist, brilliant as are his dis- 
 coveries, who expects to learn any new truths about 
 the way of redemption, and about the nature and em- 
 ployments of the soul in the future world? The earth, 
 too, is explored to its utmost limits and its utmost 
 depths, but what has the traveler and the miner,after 
 these wanderings and diggings, to tell about God? Is 
 wisdom found by the miner now any more than it was 
 in the days of Job? 
 
 “He [the miner] cutteth out rivers among the rocks, 
 and his eye seeth every precious thing. He bindeth 
 the floods from overflowing, and the thing that is hid 
 bringeth he forth to light. But where shall wisdom be 
 found? And where is the place of understanding? 
 Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found 
 in the land of the living. The depth saith, It 1s not in 
 me; and the sea saith, Itis not withme. It can not be 
 gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the 
 price thereof. It can not be valued with the gold of 
 Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. Whence, 
 then, cometh wisdom ? and where is the place of under- 
 standing? seeing it is hid from the eyes of all living, 
 and kept close from the fowls of the air. Destruction 
 and death say, We have heard the fame thereof with 
 
384 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 our ears. God understandeth the way thereof, and he 
 knoweth the place thereof” (Job, xxviii., 10-23). 
 
 The geologist, too, the man who has learned the his- 
 tory of the earth for some millions of ages, what has he 
 to disclose that shall supersede the teachings of Chris- 
 tianity? What answer has he found to the questions 
 which so perplex the human mind about the remedy 
 for a fallen condition, and a preparation for another 
 world ? 
 
 It may seem to be a reflection on the present age, 
 and it may require some hardihood to make the asser- 
 tion, to say that, after all, if a man wished to put him- 
 self into a’ position where, without a revelation, he 
 would find most that would calm his spirit, and solve 
 his doubts, and elevate his conceptions of eternal things, 
 he would go, not into the dissecting-room of the anat- 
 omist ; not into the observatory of the astronomer; not, 
 into the laboratory of the chemist; but would visit the 
 ancient Academy, the Porch, and the Lyceum. ©: 
 
 On this subject, then, we claim that the Gospel is as 
 really in advance of the world as it was when it was 
 first communicated to men; that the world has neither 
 gone beyond it, nor come up to it, nor made its teach- 
 ings less necessary than they were eighteen hundred 
 years ago. 
 
 (2.) Assuming, then, that the apostles had truths to 
 communicate to mankind in advance of what the world 
 then possessed, and that in respect to those truths the 
 Gospel is as really in advance of the world in its pres- 
 ent stage of progress as it was then, it remains to in- 
 quire whether, in respect to the means which Christian- 
 ity now has for propagating and perpetuating those 
 truths, it has fallen behind the world, or maintains its 
 advanced position still ? 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 385 
 
 It is usual to represent the apostles as endowed with 
 peculiar and exclusive powers in propagating the truths 
 of Christianity. It is not uncommon for men to feel 
 that the Church has lost much by the cessation of their 
 peculiar endowments in making an aggressive move- 
 ment on idolatry and sin. It is not unnatural to feel 
 that if the Church could again be clothed with the 
 power which it had in apostolic times, the conquest of 
 the world to Christ would be easy and rapid, and it is 
 conceivable that many a youthful soldier of the cross, 
 panting for the conversion of the world, and resolving 
 to devote himself to that great purpose in the work of 
 the ministry, or in a missionary life, feels a sense of dis- 
 couragement in the fact that he must go forth with few 
 of the advantages which the apostles had in their work. © 
 It is important to inquire whether this is. so. 
 
 » The relation of the apostles to the world may be re- 
 garded as positive and negative. 
 
 (a) Positive. They had three things. rst. The 
 power of speaking the languages of the world; or, at 
 once, and without study, the power of making their 
 message known to the people of all lands. This seems 
 to have been an unlimited power. In the case of a mis- 
 sionary now, the best years of his life are consumed in 
 efforts, often imperfect efforts, to place himself in the 
 condition in which the apostles were when they com- 
 menced their work. Second. They had the power of 
 working miracles. They healed the sick; they opened 
 the eyes of the blind; they raised the dead. This, too, 
 seems to have been an unlimited power. Third. They 
 had the advantage of freshness and novelty in the mes- 
 sage which they proclaimed to the world. Whatever 
 might be said in other respects in regard to the system 
 which they preached, it could not be denied that the 
 
 R col 
 
S8Ge~ LECTURES ON THE 
 
 statement that there had been a proper incarnation of 
 the Deity in the land of Judea; that the Son of God in 
 human form had trod those hills and vales; that he 
 had moved with a healing power through the land; 
 that in his presence the insane had become sane, the 
 blind had been made to see, the deaf to hear, the lame 
 to walk, and the dead to leave their graves; that he 
 had died on a cross as an atoning sacrifice for men; 
 that he had risen to life again, and had reascended to 
 God—that all these were statements that were jitted to 
 arrest the attention of men. Such statements had never 
 fallen on human ears before. 
 
 (6) Negative. We are to remember, in order to form 
 a correct estimate of the relation of the apostles to the 
 world in the effort to spread the Gospel, the following 
 things: First. It was an experiment; a trial not yet 
 certain except to faith. There had been no past expe- 
 rience in regard to Christianity; there was no history 
 which could be referred to; there was no influence as 
 yet on the world that could be an argument why men 
 should receive it. It was a new system, whose adapt- 
 edness to the wants of men was yet to be tried. WSec- 
 ond. There was, as yet, no public sentiment in its favor 
 which could be appealed to, or which could be assumed 
 as a.ground of appeal. On the contrary, the entire sen- 
 timent of the world was against it. . Zhird. There was 
 no press for the rapid diffusion of their doctrines beyond 
 the power of the living voice. We can scarcely put 
 ourselves, even in imagination, in this respect, in their 
 circumstances. Accustomed as we are to the press;_ 
 the printed page; the power of defending our senti- 
 ments through the press, and of arguing with men 
 through the press, we can scarcely conceive what it 
 would be if that power were withdrawn. Fourth. The 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 387 
 
 apostles had no Christian literature. Beyond the books 
 of the New Testament—and, in the beginning of their 
 work, not even these were written, and, in the end of 
 their work, not yet collected into a volume—there was 
 nothing to explain, to illustrate, and to defend their 
 doctrines; there was nothing to edify the Church; there 
 was nothing to instruct and guide the young. J%/th. 
 There were no schools, colleges, or seminaries of learn- 
 ing under Christian influence, and designed to train up 
 a generation for Christ. All the schools that existed 
 were Jewish or heathen; nor was there one where a 
 Christian youth might be instructed in the ways of the 
 true religion, or that contemplated the training of a 
 generation for the service of God. Sixth. There was, 
 as yet, no established organization of believers into 
 churches, designed to bring a united influence to bear 
 upon the world. All this was the slow work of time. 
 
 It is to be remembered, also, that, whatever were the 
 advantages of the gift of tongues, and the power of 
 working miracles, the immediate effect was not the con- 
 version of sinners. In the life of the Savior himself, 
 there is no evidence that a single sinner was converted 
 by his miracles, nor in the labors of the apostles is there 
 proof that one was converted by the miracles which 
 they wrought, or by their power of speaking foreign 
 languages. This was, indeed, a proof of the divine ori- 
 gin of their religion. The multitude that came to- 
 gether on the day of Pentecost “marveled,” were 
 “amazed,” and were “confounded”—ovvexiSn (Acts, ii., 
 6, 7), “ because that every man heard them speak in his 
 own language ;” but the three thousand were converted, 
 as other men are, by the preaching of Christ crucified. 
 Miracles converted no one. Thousands saw the mira- 
 cles of the Savior who joined in the ery “ Crucify him.” 
 
388 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 Mere eloquence converted no one. “And my speech 
 and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s 
 wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and with 
 power” (1 Cor., xi, 4). “And I, brethren, when I came 
 unto you, came not with excellency of speech or of wis- 
 dom, declaring unto you the testimony of God.” 
 
 The sole ground of reliance by the apostles for the 
 conversion of men was the great truth that Christ was 
 crucified for the sins of the world, accompanied by the 
 power of the Holy Ghost.* In not a single instance do 
 they trace the conversion of a sinner to miracles, to the 
 power of speaking a foreign language, to eloquence. In 
 each and every instance it is the power of truth as ap- 
 plied by the Holy Ghost. ; 
 
 That power—that ground of reliance—we have now 
 as much and as really as the apostles had—as much 
 and as really—no less; no more. The truth is un- 
 changed; the power of the Holy Ghost is undimin- 
 ished; the promises that He will apply the truth when 
 properly presented are as full and as fresh now as they 
 were then. Each minister of the Gospel, in Christian 
 or in heathen lands, may go to his workeas fully under 
 the influence of this feeling, and as fully armed with 
 this power, as the apostles; and as the power from this 
 source was entirely in advance of what the world pos- 
 sessed in the time of the apostles, so is it equally in ad- 
 vance of the world in the stage of its present progress 
 in civilization, science, and the arts. 
 
 (3.) I refer next in proof that the Gospel has not fall- 
 en behind the world, that it has now the advantage of 
 the trial made by it during the long period of eighteen 
 hundred years. Like every other system, it started, of 
 
 * Compare Acts, ii., 16-21; x., 44; xi., 16; xvi., 14; 1 Cor., 
 iii., 5, 7. | | 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 389 
 
 course, Without this advantage; like every other sys- 
 tem, it may now avail itself of all that can fairly be de- 
 rived from its history in vindication of its truth, and in 
 aiding in its diffusion. 
 
 It has a history—a long, a peculiar, a definite, a very 
 marked history. It had its origin at a time when the 
 great empire that had so long ruled the world was 
 tending to decay; it lived through all the changes 
 which occurred in its “ Decline and Fall” as traced by 
 Mr. Gibbon; it has been connected, in many cases close- 
 ly identified, with the origin and growth of the great 
 kingdoms which now control the world. It has a his- 
 tory as bearing on individuals; on families; on nations; 
 on the course of events. It has a history in regard to 
 trials; to conflicts; to persecutions; to death. It has 
 a history of confessors, saints, and martyrs; a history in 
 regard to its influence on domestic life, on education, 
 on customs and laws. That history is now before the 
 world, and can not now be changed. 
 
 It is true that, in close connection with real Chris- 
 tianity, often so apparently close as to be mistaken for 
 it, there has been a history of false Christianity—a sys- 
 tem of persecution, blood, and fire. The friends of 
 Christianity are not insensible to that fact; they do 
 not attempt to conceal it. In nominal connection with 
 Christianity there have been wars, corruptions, vices, 
 Oppressions, persecutions. But these doings are not 
 Christianity, nor is Christianity responsible for them. 
 If, however, a man should strangely say, lost to all 
 great principles of history and philosophy, that Chris- 
 tianity zs responsible for these things, we ask, Why? ~ 
 How? Are these things prescribed and commanded in 
 the book which embodies the laws and doctrines of the 
 system—the New Testament? Did they characterize 
 
390 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 the life of its Great Founder? Were they enjoined by 
 the teachings of his apostles? There can be no mis- 
 take on this subject. The nature of the system, as laid 
 down in the New Testament, can not be misunderstood. 
 The enemies of religion can tell what the religion re- 
 quires as well as its friends, and often the best judges 
 of what it demands are those who complain of the in- 
 consistencies of its professed friends, and who hold them 
 to the observance of a rule which they themselves seem 
 little inclined to obey. 
 
 We know what the effect of Christianity is—its effect 
 on the child, the wife, the man. We know what is its 
 effect on domestic peace, industry, comfort. We know 
 what is its effect in elevating woman, under nearly all 
 other systems sunk in deep degradation. We know 
 what is its effect on intelligence, industry, and liberty. 
 
 We know what are its affinities ; with what it nat- 
 urally combines. We are very imperfectly acquainted 
 with the elements of matter until we know with what 
 they will combine, and what will be the result of the 
 combination. Each of the sixty or more elementary 
 substances that compose our world has its own proper- 
 ties, and we do not understand the nature of matter 
 itself until we understand what the properties of those 
 individual substances are, and with what other sub- 
 stances, and in what proportions, they will combine. 
 There is the power of attraction and repulsion; there 
 are laws of chemical affinity that produce all the forms 
 of matter, either when united with life or when inor- 
 ganic, which make up our beautiful world. We do not 
 understand the nature of oxygen or nitrogen; of phos- 
 phorus, of carbon, or of calcilum—of any of the metals, 
 until we know with what they combine, and in what 
 proportions. 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 391 
 
 The same is true of systems of morals and religion. 
 We know not what they are until we know what their 
 affinities are—with what they most naturally combine. 
 
 No man is surprised to find Mr. Hume, under the no- 
 tions of religion which he cherished, proclaiming that 
 “justice is not a natural, but artificial virtue, depending 
 wholly ‘on the arbitrary institutions of men, and pre- 
 vious to the establishment of civil society not at all in- 
 cumbent; that moral, intellectual, and corporeal virtue 
 are all of the same kind; that adultery must be prac- 
 ticed if men would obtain all the advantages of this 
 life; that, if generally practiced, it would soon cease to 
 be scandalous, and that, if practiced secretly and fre- 
 quently, it would by degrees come to be thought no 
 crime at all; that the life of a man is of no greater im- 
 portance than that of an oyster, and as it is admitted 
 that there is no crime in diverting the Nile or the Dan- 
 ube from their courses, so there can be none in turning 
 a few ounces of blood from their natural channel, or 
 that suicide is lawful.”* His principles led to such re- 
 sults, and he had the hardihood and the honesty to 
 avow it. No man is surprised to learn that the horrors 
 of the French Revolution followed the promulgation of 
 the doctrines of the French Encyclopedia. All the 
 blood shed in the French capital; all the crimes of the 
 Revolution, were the regular results of the doctrines de- 
 fended by Voltaire and his fellow-laborers. No man was 
 surprised at the results reached in “ New Harmony,” 
 The seed sown produced its appropriate harvest. 
 
 The same principle is applicable to Christianity. 
 Like the chemical elements in nature, and like the sys- 
 tems of infidel philosophy, it has its proper laws of affin- 
 
 * See the proof that Mr. Hume held. these opinions in Magee on 
 Atonement and Sacrifice, p. 425-429. 
 
392 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 ity; and its nature is not known till those laws are un- 
 derstood. After an experience of eighteen hundred 
 years, the world has learned what those laws are. 
 Christianity combines every where with pure morality, 
 with chaste living, with refined manners, with domestic 
 peace, with temperance, with industry, with order, with 
 law, with learning, with liberty. The press, colleges, 
 schools, the courtesies of refined life, charity to the poor, 
 to the needy, and to the outcast, find a natural ally in 
 Christianity, and, wherever it goes, we know that these 
 will be found in its train. What it has gained in this — 
 respect 1s a part of its capital, and is not to be trans- 
 ferred to any other system. 
 
 (4.) I refer next, in proof that Christianity has not 
 fallen behind the world, and as illustrating its relation 
 to civilization, science, and the arts, to what, for want 
 of a better name, may be called its radiations. I mean 
 by that term to denote the influences which have gone 
 . beyond the direct agency of the system, and which have 
 passed over on other systems, and made them, in a 
 great measure, what they are. The idea is, that the 
 condition of the world has been materially modified by 
 Christianity beyond its direct influence, and that, to un- 
 derstand its exact nature and value, the extent of that 
 influence should be known. 
 
 I have endeavored to show in this Lecture that the 
 world has made great progress since the Gospel was 
 first made known; that it is in many respects a differ- 
 ent world from what it was when Paul stood on Mars’ 
 Hill in Athens; that a Greek of the age of Pericles, if 
 he should now appear again, would find himself in a 
 different world from that in which he lived. The re- 
 mark which I am now making is, that this change has 
 been produced in a very. considerable degree by what 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 393 
 
 I refer to as the radiations of Christianity ; by those in- 
 fluences which have passed beyond its immediate sphere 
 in the Church, and which have affected surrounding ob- 
 jects. Irefer to those things which make a Christian 
 nation different from other nations; to those things de- 
 rived from it which could not now be detached from civ- 
 ilization without destroying. the entire fabric. 
 
 It is probable that there is not one thing that now 
 - pertains to us in a Christian land, and which we value 
 as a part of our civilization, which has not been made 
 in a great manner what it is by the silent and accumu- 
 lating influence of Christianity. The laws under which 
 we live are different from what they would have been. 
 The methods of administering justice are different. The 
 ideas of punishment are different. The securities for 
 life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are different. 
 The manners and customs of those among whom we 
 live are different. Our domestic arrangements are dif- 
 ferent. The provisions made for the poor and the. 
 needy; for the sick and the wounded; for the blind, 
 the deaf, and the insane, are different. 
 
 Now it is impossible to ascertain how much of this 
 is due to Christianity, for no man can prove that the 
 world would not have made progress in these respects 
 if Christianity had not been revealed. But no man can 
 deny that a very considerable portion of the comforts 
 which we enjoy from day to day are to be traced to the 
 radiating influences of the Gospel. Apart from what 
 is its religious teaching, and apart from its influence in 
 saving the soul, the world is different now from what 
 it would have been if the Christian system had not been 
 revealed. 
 
 We claim all this as belonging to Christianity, and 
 as indicating its source. And in estimating the rela- 
 
 R 2 
 
394 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 tion of Christianity to the world in its present stage of 
 progress in science, civilization, and the arts, we ask 
 that all that it has done in making science, civilization, 
 and the aris what they are, should be taken into the ac- 
 count; and we hold that the question whether Chris- 
 tianity is still ahead of the world, or whether it is 
 abreast of the world, or whether it has fallen in the 
 rear, and can now be dispensed with, can not be determ- 
 ined unless we could detach from the institutions of so- 
 cial and eivilized life all that they have derived from 
 the Christian religion, and survey them as they would 
 be then. | 
 
 (5.) I refer, in illustration of the relation of Christian- 
 ity to the present age and to future ages, to what, for 
 want of a better term, also, I may call the appliances of 
 Christianity. I refer to the question whether it has 
 kept its relative position in regard to the means of 
 propagating and perpetuating itself on the earth. 
 
 We have seen, in the previous remarks, that there 
 was little in this respect in the time of the apostles; 
 that Christianity had no press, no literature, no schools, 
 almost no organization. 
 
 In reference to the means which the world now has 
 of perpetuating and extending what it has secured, 
 there is a difference as great between the apostolic age 
 and the present as there is in the things which have 
 been secured at one period and the other. Whatever 
 may have been done in regard to ancient literature, to 
 scientific discoveries, to valuable works of art, to civil- 
 ization, to the means of prosecuting war, as to the ques- 
 tion of perpetuating these things, it is certain that 
 nothing, in all time to come, will now imperil their ex- 
 istence. Those great discoveries are secured in libra- 
 ries, in public monuments, in the very necessities of 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 395 
 
 common life. What now can destroy a great poem, a 
 valuable historical work, or a treatise on medicine or 
 astronomy, multiplied as it is by the art of printing? 
 What can destroy the printing-press, the compass, the 
 quadrant, the steam-engine, the magnetic telegraph ? 
 Society, in striking out these inventions, has made them 
 self-perpetuating, and has secured the means, in the 
 things themselves, of their preservation, of their diffu- 
 sion over the earth, and of their transmission to future 
 times. Has Christianity, in its movements, kept its rel- 
 ative position in this respect also ? 
 
 Christianity, more than science, has secured the press. 
 It early seized upon it as a most important auxiliary ; 
 it made it tributary to its own great work in diffusing 
 the doctrines of the Reformation; it now employs it in 
 the work of diffusing the truths of revelation in a large 
 part of the languages spoken on the earth. It takes 
 the press with it wherever it goes; it forms no plan for 
 its own propagation or perpetuity except in connection 
 with it. 
 
 Christianity has a literature of its own, as large, as 
 important, as powerful on public sentiment as the liter- 
 ature of any other department of thought and action. 
 One would, perhaps, be surprised, in attempting to re- 
 move what is properly a Christian literature from the 
 aleoves of a great library, to find how large a part of 
 the library would be removed by such an attempt; how 
 many vacancies would be made on the shelves—to see 
 how much of that literature has been created by Chris- 
 tianity ; how much that once controlled the world has 
 been removed into a comparatively obscure and unfre- 
 quented part of the library by the changes which have 
 been made by Christianity in public opinion. 
 
 Christianity has done much to coiitrol the literature 
 
396 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 which it has not directly created, and has made it dif- 
 ferent from what it would otherwise have been, A 
 large part of the books of history, poetry, philosophy, 
 and science are different from what they would have — 
 been if they had had their origin in lands remote from 
 the Christian religion. Even Mr. Hume’s History of 
 England was moulded and modified by the fact that he 
 wrote of a Christian nation; Mr. Gibbon’s History is 
 not what it would have been if he had not been called 
 upon to record the influence of Christianity in remould- 
 ing the nations of Europe during and after the decline 
 and fall of the Roman empire. 
 
 The great names which adorn Christian literature are 
 quite on a level with those which pertain wholly to the 
 world. In history, in poetry, in eloquence, in close and 
 powerful reasoning, the names which Christianity claims 
 as its own are on a level, at least, with those which are 
 claimed by the world. In poetry, is there a greater 
 than John Milton? In profound reasoning, is there a 
 greater than Jonathan Edwards? In imagination, is 
 there one superior to Jeremy Taylor? In eloquence, 
 has the world any superior to Massillon or Bourdaloue 
 —to Robert Hall or Thomas Chalmers ? 
 
 Christianity has surrounded itself with colleges and 
 schools. It plants them wherever it goes. Taking the 
 world at large, the colleges are, at least, under a nom- 
 inal Christian influence. Edinburgh, St. Andrew’s, Glas- 
 gow, Cambridge, and Oxford; Bonn, Heidelburg, Halle, 
 Gottingen, are, to a great extent, under Christian influ- 
 ence. In our own country there is not one avowedly 
 infidel college; nor could such a college be sustained, 
 There was one founded under the auspices of a great 
 state, and under the patronage of one that at one time 
 wielded more influence than any other man in the United 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 397 
 
 States, but its own internal peace demanded the influ- 
 ence of religion, and, in this respect, it has taken its 
 place by the side of the other colleges of the land. 
 There is not a Legislature in our land that would char- 
 ter an infidel college as such, nor could it live a year if 
 it were thus chartered. 
 
 Christianity has originated a new form of literature 
 wholly its own; a literature not known under any an- 
 cient form of raaupine y; not known under any form 
 of modern heathenism; not known to infidelity; not 
 known to philosophy ; and it has, at the same time, orig- 
 inated an institution most effective for applying that 
 literature, and for securing its own influence over the 
 young. I allude to the Sabbath-school, and to the Lit- 
 erature which has been originated by that institution. 
 This, if there were nothing else, would show that Chris- 
 tianity, in its efforts to perpetuate and propagate itself, 
 is quite abreast of the world. The literature of the 
 Sabbath-school may not be, in respect to quality, all 
 that could be desired, but it may be doubted whether 
 there is any other department of literature that is ex- 
 erting as much influence on the destinies of mankind. 
 Infidelity has no peculiar literature for the young, nor 
 has-it any institution where to inculcate its sentiments 
 on the young. Mohammedanism and Buddhism have 
 no peculiar literature for the young, nor have they any 
 peculiar institution for training up the young in those 
 views of religion. Science, with great difficulty, pre- 
 pares books for the young, but its literature in astron- 
 omy, botany, chemistry, designed to guide the young, 
 as compared with the literature of the Sabbath-school, 
 is meagre in the extreme. The Sabbath-school, and the 
 Sabbath-school library, stand by themselves. Both ca- 
 pable undoubtedly of great improvement, they are, 
 
398 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 nevertheless, exerting a vast power on the coming gen- 
 eration, and it is difficult to see how a religion that has 
 such an agency as the Sabbath-school cowld be exterm- 
 inated from the world. One day during each week, of 
 every month in the year, the children of this nation are 
 brought directly under Christian instruction, with all 
 the advantages, in theory at least, of calling into the 
 service the best talent, the highest intelligence, the 
 warmest piety, the most devoted zeal, existing in the 
 churches... Through all the states of the Union, and in 
 all the territories, by agencies of its own, that literature 
 is placed in the hands of the young, before other influ- 
 ences are brought to bear on them, to form their opin- 
 ions, to make their hearts pure, to teach them to believe 
 the Bible, and to love and serve God. Whatever else 
 the world may do in its progress, we may be certain 
 that it will not be in advance of this arrangement of 
 Christianity to diffuse and perpetuate itself upon the 
 earth. 
 
 The argument which has been submitted to you in 
 this Lecture, as the conclusion of the course, is founded 
 on the idea that a religion starting in advance of the 
 world, from such a region, and such a source as that in 
 which Christianity was originated, and which, through 
 ages of wonderful progress in civilization, science, and 
 the arts, still, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, 
 maintains that position; a religion which has lived 
 through all forms of furious and fiery persecution; a 
 religion which has originated much of that which now 
 enters into the ameliorated condition of the world in 
 customs, manners, laws, and modes of life; a religion 
 which, by elective affinity, has attached itself to all that 
 is good and valuable in human discoveries, and has re- 
 fused a permanent connection with evil; a religion 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 399 
 
 which now, in its own means of perpetuity and propa- 
 gation, is still in advance of the world, can be best ex- 
 plained on the supposition that it is what it claims to 
 be, of divine origin, and that it can not be explained on 
 any other supposition. The argument is, substantially, 
 that it must have been founded on a knowledge of the 
 future which is above the unaided powers of man; on 
 the fact that man can not adjust any system to the fu- 
 ture in its varying and uncertain changes; on the fact 
 that in all human systems there must be arrangements 
 for making changes to adapt them to unforeseen devel- 
 opments and the progress of the world—as in govern- 
 ments providing for “amendments” to their Constitu- 
 tions, as in our own, or silently submitting to changes 
 forced upon them by time, as in the British Constitu- 
 tion; on the fact that in architecture, in the arts, in ag- 
 riculture, in navigation, in all the great departments of 
 human progress, the things which are adapted to one 
 age must silently give way in the progress of events— 
 as in naval warfare the Greek triremes would be useless 
 now, and wooden ships are superseded by iron-clad ves- 
 sels, and in land service the buckler, and the shield, and 
 the breastplate, and the coat of mail have been laid 
 aside; on the fact that no ereed originated by man can 
 be adapted to every coming age of the world and to 
 every land; on the fact that the old arrangements for 
 preserving the memory of past events and the discov- 
 eries in science, by wax, and metal plates, and the sty- 
 lus, become useless when the art of printing’ is made 
 known, and are laid aside. Since, of necessity, all these 
 things pass away, how was it that Christianity was ad- 
 justed, at the outset, to all the possible changes in the 
 world; to all the progress which mankind could make 
 in science, in civilization, and the arts? The simplest 
 
400 LECTURES ON THE 
 
 solution is, that it was originated by an Omniscient 
 One, and is therefore divine. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of this argument, there zs 
 an inference from the whole subject in which all will 
 agree, and the statement of which is peculiarly appro- 
 priate to this place, and as the closing remark of these 
 Lectures. It is, that such a religion is to maintain its 
 position only by keeping abreast or ahead of the world. 
 The men who are to defend it in this age and in com- 
 ing generations are to be men who are “up to their 
 age.” The arguments by which the philosophy of the 
 Epicureans and Stoics could be met at Athens do not 
 constitute all the arguments which are needed now. 
 The weapons which led to victory in the contests of the 
 “fathers” with Celsus and Porphyry will not necessa- 
 rily lead to victory now. The methods of the school- 
 men are not all that is needed now. The weapons 
 which seemed so formidable in past ages might not be 
 formidable now. Old weapons of war— greaves, and 
 shields, and spears, and catapults, were useful, but there 
 comes a time when they are laid aside, and find repose 
 in ancient halls and towers. There is a “living age,” 
 and it is much for a young man entering on life, and es- 
 pecially in a position where he will be called to defend 
 Christianity as the main business of his life, to know 
 that there zs such an age, and what it is. Theologians 
 must deal with living men and with living opinions, 
 and if they are not prepared for this, they are not pre- 
 pared for the work of their age. The ministry must be 
 prepared to meet men—living men—on the question of 
 the inspiration of the Scriptures, and with arguments 
 that will commend themselves to those trained in the 
 principles of profound criticism; on the question about 
 the antiquity of the race on earth, and with arguments 
 
EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 401 
 
 not derived from synods and councils; on the whole 
 question of miracles, and of a supernatural influence in 
 the affairs of men. A more deep and subtle Pantheism 
 in the form of Rationalism or Positivism lies at the 
 foundation of the sciences of this day, as they are held, 
 than the great mass of the friends of Christianity are 
 aware of, and against all this, it may be unconsciously, 
 the friend of Christianity struggles and contends when 
 he attempts to impress its truths on the minds of men. 
 No true friend of Christianity could wish that the min- 
 isters of religion should be less pious, or less imbued 
 with Biblical learning; but let them go prepared to 
 meet the world as it is, arte not go clad in the armor of 
 a past generation, only to find that the enemy which 
 that kind of armor is fitted to subdue has long been 
 wandering in the land of shades among the eo -er- 
 rants of the past. 
 
 It can not, therefore, but be regarded as a very au- 
 spicious circumstance that in this seminary a movement 
 should have been commenced, suggested by, and sus- 
 tained by laymen, with a view to this state of things; 
 to connect the seminary more with the world around 
 it; to draw to its aid what may be of advantage in this 
 respect from those engaged in other departments of 
 learning, and those engaged in the active duties of pas- 
 toral life; and it is an auspicious circumstance—what 
 those laymen well knew would be the case—that such 
 a movement has the entire concurrence of the pro- 
 fessors of the seminary, and is hailed by them as mate- 
 rially aiding them in their great work. Other things © 
 being equal, that seminary of sacred learning only 
 which thus feels the contact with the living world will 
 meet the wants of the coming age; those institutions 
 which do not feel this, and which resist such influences, 
 
402 LECTURES ON THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 will exhaust their power in perpetuating a dead ortho- 
 doxy in the Church, and will leave the world around 
 to the influence of Rationalism, Positivism, and Pan- 
 theism. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE LECTURE ON 
 MIRACLES—LECTURE V. 
 
 In the delivery of these Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity, 
 there was a very important point which, if not wholly passed over, was 
 not discussed with the fullness which the nature of the subject de- 
 manded. Of this I was myself deeply sensible when the Lectures 
 were composed, and of this I presume my hearers were painfully sen- 
 sible at the time when they were delivered. I can not doubt that 
 there were persons in the audience who would have been desirous of 
 asking me questions, as I should have been if I had been listening to a 
 course of Lectures on that subject, and I can not deny that questions 
 might have been easily proposed which I could not have answered, and 
 it may have excited some surprise that inquiries which could have been 
 so easily made, and which would have seemed to be so obviously prop- 
 er, were not more fully considered in the Lectures. These inquiries 
 might have been made by two classes of persons, and if proposed by 
 both or by either, they would seem to be such as to have a claim to a 
 candid answer. (a) It is probable that they may have occurred to the 
 theological students for whom the Lectures were especially prepared, 
 and who might feel that they would be likely to encounter the very 
 difficulties involved in such inquiries in the work of the ministry, and 
 who might have desired to be furnished with the means of allaying 
 doubts which perhaps were suggested by the Lectures, and of removing 
 difficulties which they could easily foresee they would be likely to meet 
 in theirprofessional life; and () they are inquiries which would haye 
 been made by those who are not believers in the truth of Christianity, 
 if such were present, and who might have found a secret satisfaction 
 in the fact that the difficulties were not met, and that the questions 
 which they would have asked were not solved, and in the belief that 
 the fact that they were not adverted to was, in their apprehension, 
 a tacit confession on the part of the lecturer that the difficulties could 
 not be removed. 
 
 These difficulties pertained especially to the subject of miracles—the 
 
404 APPENDIX. 
 
 subject particularly discussed in the fifth Lecture, though often alluded 
 to in the other Lectures. 
 
 The difficulty would be expressed, in few words, in the following 
 questions: What evidence is there in favor of the miracles of the Bible 
 stronger than that which can be alleged for witchcraft, necromancy, 
 sorcery, divination, and demonology ; for the miracles practiced among 
 the heathen; for the miracles of the early Christian Church subse- 
 quent to the time of the apostles, and for the miracles of the Roman 
 Catholic communion? Since, in the progress of the world; in the 
 diffusion of science; in the advances of civilization; in the careful ex- 
 amination of historical testimony, the world has been disabused of be- 
 lief in these things, or is tending to universal skepticism in regard to 
 them, why should not the same result be reached in regard to the al- 
 leged miracles of the Bible, and to all that is claimed there to be su- 
 pernatural? In other words, why should not the principles of Ration- 
 alism, which have been made so effective in relieving the world of su- 
 perstition, and of unfounded claims to the supernatural, be applied to 
 that which is claimed in the Bible to be supernatural, and the race be 
 effectually delivered from all that remains that is supposed to be a de- 
 parture from the established laws of nature ? 
 
 For the ,omission in not considering this inquiry there were two 
 reasons : 
 
 One was the difficulty of prosecuting the inquiry in a course of Lec- 
 tures designed to be in their main features of a popular character, in 
 such a manner as to make it interesting to the audience that was to 
 be addressed. The course of Lectures, by the terms of the founda- 
 tion, was, indeed, designed mainly to be for the benefit of the students 
 of the seminary, and the course prescribed was to be on such subjects 
 as would come before them in their preparation for the ministry, and in 
 this view the points now adverted to would have been eminently ap- 
 propriate, difficult as it might have been to make the discussion inter- 
 esting in a public Lecture; but the course was also designed to be, in 
 some measure, a connecting link between the seminary and the public, 
 and it was contemplated that the Lectures should be of such a charac- 
 ter as would be interesting to a popular audience, and it would haye 
 been difficult to present an argument on these points which would be 
 interesting to such an audience. An argument on the subject, to be 
 of value, must be somewhat abstruse. Such an argument could not 
 have been compressed into a single Lecture, and could not have been | 
 appended to the Lecture devoted to the subject of miracles, without 
 protracting it to a length that would have violatef all the rules of 
 propriety. It might have been difficult, moreover, before such an au- 
 dience, to present the subject in such a manner as not to create more 
 
APPENDIX. 405 
 
 doubts than would have been allayed, and the subject, therefore, was 
 passed over in silence. 
 
 The other reason for the omission was, that if the questions had 
 been proposed to me, I should have been constrained to admit that 
 there were difficulties on the subject which I could not then solve. 
 
 In reference to these difficulties I made the following remarks in the 
 course of the Lecture on Miracles: 
 
 **T confess that of all the questions ever asked on the subject of 
 miracles, this is the most perplexing and the most difficult to answer. 
 It is rather to be wondered at that it has not been pressed with more 
 zeal by those who deny the reality of miracles, and that they have 
 placed their objections so extensively on other grounds. From the 
 fact that it is so seldom referred to by skeptics, it is manifest that it 
 does not strike them as it strikes me, and that they, from some cause, 
 are not disposed to use it as I would, if I had no faith in miracles; and 
 perhaps it may savor more of apparent candor than of wise prudence 
 for a believer in the reality of miracles even to make the suggestion. 
 
 ** The argument might be made very strong, and if there were time 
 to present it here, it might be done in such a manner that it might 
 seem, at least, to be impossible to meet and refute it.”* 
 
 I might, indeed, have taken refuge from the difficulties adverted to 
 under the plea that on any subject questions may be asked which can 
 not, in the present state of human knowledge, and perhaps with the 
 limited capacities of the human mind, be answered; that it is no cer- 
 tain evidence of the falseness of an opinion, or the weakness of an ar- 
 gument, that such questions can be asked; and that if we were to 
 pause in our investigations of truth at the exact point where a question 
 might be asked which we could not answer, the range of our inquiries 
 would be narrowed down to the smallest conceivable dimensions. Such 
 an answer, however, would not have satisfied an inquirer, and the im- 
 pression could scarcely have been ayoided in such an answer that there 
 was a consciousness that there was something in the question which 
 could not be answered; for while it would be admitted by all persons 
 qualified to judge in such inquiries that questions may be asked on any 
 subject which no one can answer, it must be admitted that questions 
 may be asked on most subjects which, if not answered, will be fatal to 
 an argument. In such a case as that before us, under such cireum- 
 stances, the inference would be Jike/y to be drawn that this was one 
 of those subjects. 
 
 The argument on miracles, therefore, would not be complete if, after 
 having referred so often in the Lecture to this as constituting perhaps 
 the most important point in the evidences of Christianity in the nine- 
 
 * Page 161. 
 
406 APPENDIX. 
 
 teenth century, and after having, perhaps, suggested doubts which 
 might not have occurred to others, I should allow the Lectures to go 
 forth in a volume, perhaps much beyond the circle of those who heard 
 them, withcut an attempt, at least, to solve the difficulty, though in 
 doing it I may have occasion on some points to avail myself of the 
 admission that there are difficulties which I can not solve, and that 
 questions may be asked on this subject, as on any other, which we 
 might be compelled to admit that we could not answer. 
 
 The point of difficulty, and the question to be solved, may be made 
 apparent by a few remarks: 
 
 (a) In a course of Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity in the 
 Nineteenth Century, it was impossible not to advert to the great chan- 
 ges which have occurred in the opinions of the world on the subject of 
 the supernatural and the marvelous in the course of eighteen hundred 
 years—in other words, to the progress of ‘** Rationalism” in that long 
 period. The fact of such a change is apparent on the face of history, 
 and the progress of ‘‘ Rationalism” becomes a very important part of 
 history, alike in secular and sacred matters, for the principles of Ra- 
 tionalism have been applied as fearlessly to Grecian records and to 
 Roman history as to the Bible. Eighteen hundred years ago there 
 were numerous subjects then supposed to pertain to the region of the 
 supernatural which are now well understood to be connected with the 
 operation of the regular laws of nature, as eclipses, meteors, comets, 
 storms, diseases; and there were numerous other subjects then sup- 
 posed to be connected with the supernatural, as divination, necroman- 
 cy, witchcraft, and sorcery, which have been detached from the faith 
 of mankind, and which have taken their place with myths and legends. 
 So far as the facts in regard to this change of opinion are concerned, 
 and so far, in the main, as the causes of this change are concerned, the 
 history has been given to the world in our own time in a work of 
 great learning, with great attractiveness of style, and with a full ac- 
 quaintance with the subject—a work which leaves nothing in regard to 
 the history of this change to be desired.* It was impossible, in a 
 course of Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity in the Nineteenth 
 Century, not to advert to this history, and not to inquire into the bear- 
 ing of this change in the sentiments of mankind on the evidences of 
 the miraculous and the supernatural in the Bible. The history of this 
 change I have, therefore, more than once adverted to. The fact of 
 the change can not be called in question; its tendency, as relating to 
 the question of the evidences of revealed religion, is one of the most 
 important inquiries now before the Church and the world. 
 
 * History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 
 by W. E. H. Lecky, M.A.,in 2 vols. N. York: D. Appleton and Co., 1866. 
 
APPENDIX. 407 
 
 (6) The effect of this change, as related to the subjects discussed 
 in these Lectures, are such as the following : 
 
 1, A great number of things once regarded as matters of true his- 
 tory are now reduced to the place of legends, myths, fables. One has 
 only to look into Grote’s History of Greece, or into Niebuhr’s History 
 of Rome, or indeed into any history that professes to trace events in 
 the past to their origin, to see, if the expression may be allowed, as de- 
 rived from the classic writings, that the ‘‘ god Terminus” has removed 
 the point where authentic history commences very far within what was 
 once regarded as the true boundary, and that the intelligible and reli- 
 able accounts of the affairs of the world have their beginning very far 
 within what was once regarded as the proper point from which to 
 reckon the progress of human affairs. It is a very natural inquiry 
 whether the same process of elimination may not properly be applied 
 to the Bible, as well as to the Egyptian, Persian, Greek, and Roman 
 histories, ; 
 
 2. Many things once regarded as supernatural and miraculous, as I 
 haye more than once observed, have been reduced to the operation of 
 the regular and established laws of nature. Portents, wonders, com- 
 ets, eclipses, meteors, diseases, have been taken out of the region of the 
 supernatural, and placed under the rules of natural science, and now 
 constitute subjects of regular instructions in the schools, instead of 
 being regarded with superstitious dread, or made subjects by which 
 one class of men can secure an ascendency over another, or by which 
 the errors and impositions of false religions, under the control of a 
 priesthood, can be kept up in the world. It is a fair question, and 
 one which this age is asking, whether the same principles of explana- 
 tion can not be applied to all those cases recorded in the Bible which 
 have been commonly relied on as miracles. 
 
 3. The world has been disabused, so far as sound science has gone, 
 of its belief in divination, necromancy, demonology, witchcraft, sorcery, 
 and the region of the supernatural has been narrowed to an extent 
 which we can not well estimate by the withdrawal of these things from 
 the causes which affect the progress of human affairs and the destiny 
 of mankind. It is a question which we can not avoid in contemplat- 
 ing this course of things, whether the wonders of the Bible can not be 
 reduced to the same class of events, and may not be explained as those 
 ancient wonders that exerted so much influence on mankind may now 
 be explained, and take their places with the things that derived their 
 influence from the fears, the credulity, and the superstitions of the 
 early ages of the world. 
 
 4, There has been a gréat change on the subject of faith in the 
 miracles in the early Christian Church subsequent to the time of the 
 
408 APPENDIX. 
 
 apostles. Ifa disbelief in those miracles is not absolutely universal, 
 yet it may be said that it is rapidly becoming so, and that that result 
 is morally certain. For a long time the faith in those miracles was 
 undoubted, and, even among Protestants, the question was not whether 
 such miracles were actually wrought, but at what time they ceased. 
 So universal was the belief in those miracles, that even Mr. Locke con- 
 sulted Sir Isaac Newton on the question, not whether such miracles 
 were wrought, but at what time they ceased. In one of the letters of 
 Sir Isaac Newton to Mr. Locke there is a somewhat hesitating passage 
 on this subject: ‘‘ Miracles,” says he, ‘‘of good credit continued in 
 the Church for about two or three hundred years. Gregorius Thau- 
 maturgus had his name from thence, and was one of the latest who 
 was eminent for that gift; but of their number and frequence I am. 
 not able to give you a just account. The history of those ages is very 
 imperfect.” —Brewster’s Life of Newton, p. 275. The prevalent be- 
 lief on this subject among the Christian ‘‘ fathers,” to which I may 
 have occasion to advert again, may be learned from St. Augustine, 
 the ablest and most clear-headed of those fathers, and a man of un- 
 doubted piety. He solemnly asserts that in his own diocese of Hippo, 
 in the space of two years, no less than seventy miracles had been 
 wrought by the body of St. Stephen, and that in the neighboring proy- 
 ince of Calama, where the relic had previously been, the number was 
 incomparably greater. He gives a catalogue of what he deems un- 
 doubted miracles, which he says he had selected from a multitude so 
 great that volumes would be required to relate them all. In that cat- 
 alogue there are no less than five cases of restoration from the dead. 
 —De Civitat. Dei, lib. xxii., c. 8. See, also, Sermons of Augustine 
 (Serm. 286, § 4); and his Confessions.—B. ix., vii., p.16. Since the 
 time of Middleton, and his attack on the veracity of the fathers,* the 
 faith in these early miracles of the Christian Church has to a great 
 extent died away, and the question is an obvious one why the same 
 reasoning which has destroyed the faith of mankind in those miracles 
 should not also be applied to the miracles of the Bible? 
 
 5. The belief in the reality of the Roman Catholic miracles, once so 
 universal in Europe, and made so extensively the basis in maintaining 
 that religion in those countries where it is established, and of extend- 
 ing it among the heathen, has, in the more enlightened and scientific 
 portions of the world, almost wholly passed away. Of course, no such 
 faith is entertained by any of the Protestant nations. No such faith 
 is entertained by scientific men as such. To a great extent, also, there 
 
 * A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have 
 
 subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earliest Ages through several suc- 
 ' cessive Centuries, by Conyers Middleton, D.D. London, 1749. 
 
APPENDIX, 409 
 
 is a general incredulity on the subject among the most intelligent and 
 scientific of the Roman Catholics themselves. On this point, Mr. 
 Lecky, in remarking on the former belief in the supernatural in Eu- 
 rope, makes the following remarks: ‘‘ All this has now passed away. 
 It has passed away, not only in lands where Protestantism is triumph- 
 ant, but also in those where the Roman Catholic faith is still acknowl- 
 edged, and where the medieval saints are still venerated. St. Janu- 
 arius, it is true, continues to liquefy at Naples, and the pastorals of 
 French bishops occasionally relate apparitions of the Virgin among 
 very ignorant and superstitious peasants; but the implicit, indiscrim- 
 inating acquiescence with which such narratives were once received 
 has long since been replaced by a derisive incredulity. Those who 
 know the tone that is habitually adopted on these subjects by the con- 
 verted in Roman Catholic countries will admit that, so far from being 
 a subject of triumphant exultation, the very few modern miracles 
 which are related are every where regarded as a scandal, a stumbling- 
 block, and a difficulty. Most educated persons speak of them with 
 undisguised scorn and incredulity ; some attempt to evade or explain 
 them away by a natural hypothesis; a very few faintly and apologet- 
 ically defend them. Nor can it be said that what is manifested is 
 merely a desire for a more minute and accurate examination of the 
 evidence by which they are supported. On the contrary, it will, I 
 think, be admitted that these alleged miracles are commonly rejected 
 with an assurance that is as peremptory and unreasoning as that with 
 which they would have been once received. Nothing can be more rare 
 than a serious examination, by those who disbelieve them, of the testi- 
 mony on which they rest. They are repudiated, not because they are 
 unsupported, but because they are miraculous. Men are prepared to 
 admit almost any conceivable occurrence of natural improbabilities 
 rather than resort to the hypothesis of supernatural interferences ; and 
 this spirit is exhibited not merely by open skeptics, but by men who 
 are sincere, though perhaps not very fervent believers in their church.” 
 —History of Rationalism, vol. i., p. 159, 160. 
 ' The géneral result of this state of things, or the prevalent feeling on 
 the subject, may be stated in the words of Lecky: ‘‘If we put aside 
 the clergy, and those who are most immediately under their influence, 
 we find that this habit of mind is the invariable concomitant of educa- 
 tion, and is the especial characteristic of those persons whose intellect- 
 ual sympathies aré most extended, and who therefore represent most 
 faithfully the various intellectual influences of their time.” ‘‘ All his- 
 tory shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilization, 
 the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and 
 rarer, until at last they entirely cease.” ‘‘ The plain fact is, that the 
 
 Ss 
 
410 APPENDIX. 
 
 progress of civilization produces invariably a certain tone and habit of 
 thought which makes men recoil from miraculous narratives with an 
 instinctive and immediate repugnance, as though they were essentially 
 incredible, independently of any definite arguments, and in spite of 
 dogmatic teaching.”—Jbid, p. 161, 162. To what this change may 
 tend may be illustrated by a remark of the Rey. Frederick Temple, 
 D.D., Head-master of Rugby School, in a sermon before the Univer- 
 sity of Oxford on ‘‘ The present relations of Science to religion” —a 
 remark that may, without impropriety, be regarded as expressing the 
 sentiments or the fears of many in the Church. He says, ** The stu- 
 dent of science is learning to look upon fixed laws as universal, and 
 many of the old arguments which science once supplied to religion are 
 in consequence rapidly disappearing. How strikingly altered is our 
 view from that of a few centuries ago is shown by the fact that the 
 miracles recorded in the Bible, which once were looked on as the bul- 
 warks of the faith, are now felt by very many to be difficulties in their 
 way ; and commentators endeavor to represent them, not as mere in- 
 terferences with the laws of nature, but as the natural action of still 
 higher laws belonging to a world whose phenomena are only half re- 
 vealed to us. It is evident that this change in science necessitates a 
 change in its relation to faith. . If law be either almost or altogether 
 universal, we must look for the finger of God in that law—we must ex- 
 pect to find him manifesting his love, his wisdom, his infinity, not in 
 individual acts of will, but in a perfection of legislation rendering all 
 individual action needless ; we must find his providence in that perfect 
 adaptation of all the parts of the machine to one another which shall 
 have the effect of tender care, though it proceed by an invariable ac- 
 tion.” —Recent Inquiries in Theology, p. 489. 
 
 The great question now, as I stated in the Lecture on Miracles—the 
 great question of our age in regard to religion, and not less important 
 in regard to science, is, How far this skepticism is to extend? What 
 is its proper limit? Is the principle to become so universal as to in- 
 clude al/ the facts claiming to be of a supernatural nature which haye 
 actually occurred, or which will occur in our world? Is it to embrace 
 the whole region of the miraculous and the supernatural, so as to ex- 
 clude the idea of any direct agency on the part of God, any phenom- 
 ena—any changes—the antecedents in which are only the divine will 
 and the divine power? So it is maintained by Rationalists ; such, too, 
 is the practical belief of many men whose lives are devoted to sci- 
 ence. , 
 
 The progress of things, the influences of civilization, the discoveries 
 of science in regard to physical laws, have ‘‘ exorcised” the world, if 
 the expression may be allowed, in regard to sorcery, witchcraft, magic, 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 411 
 necromancy, portents and wonders in eclipses, storms, and earth- 
 quakes; are these to ‘‘ exorcise” the world in regard to mesmerism, 
 spiritualism, spirit-rapping, and table-moving; and are they also to 
 ‘‘exorcise” it in regard to the belief that Joshua caused the sun to 
 “stand still upon Gibeon,” and the moon ‘‘in the valley of Ajalon ;” 
 to the stilling of the tempest on the Sea of Tiberias ; to the healing of 
 the lame man at the pool of Bethesda; to the opening of the eyes of 
 Bartimeus ; to the raising of Lazarus from the grave, and to the res- 
 urrection of the Redeemer himself? 
 
 The material inquiry is, What stronger historical evidence is there 
 of the truth of the miracles of the Bible than of the alleged facts re- 
 specting witchcraft, sorcery, divination, and necromancy; the alleged 
 marvels in the early history of the world—as the prodigies which, ac- 
 cording to Livy, attended the founding of Rome; the alleged miracles 
 in the Christian Church after the death of the apostles; and the al- 
 leged miracles of the medizyval ages, and of the Catholic Church in 
 modern times? May not the same process of explanation by which 
 the world has been disabused of faith in these things be legitimately 
 applied to the Bible? Skeptics and Rationalists claim that it may be 
 so, and should be so; the existence of the Christian ert in the 
 world depends on making out the contrary. 
 
 The proper points of inquiry, therefore, in the solution of the ques- 
 tion would be, 
 
 I. The causes which have led to the name Se in the opinions of the 
 world in regard to the marvelous; and, 
 
 IJ. The question whether the segneddos of the Bible can not be ex- 
 plained in the same manner, and whether they may not also take their 
 place with the illusions and deceptions of former ages. 
 
 These inquiries manifestly cover the whole ground. 
 
 I. The causes which have led to these changes in the opinions of 
 the world in regard to the marvelous. 
 
 Those causes are now well understood, and may be referred to in 
 few words. 
 
 (1.) The reduction of events which were supposed to be supernatu- 
 ral to the operation of natural laws. In this solution the facts are, of 
 course, admitted, and the effects produced by those facts on the minds 
 of men are admitted also. The explanation is sought inlaws that are 
 now well understood, and that imply nothing that is supernatural. 
 Thus, as I have before remarked, eclipses, comets, meteors,’ that were 
 regarded as marvelous and supernatural in the early periods of the 
 world, indicating by their appearing the pleasure or the displeasure, 
 the favor or the wrath of the gods, or heralding important events, are 
 now reduced to laws that are as regular and as well understood as the 
 
412 APPENDIX. 
 ordinary laws of nature, and excite no more alarm or apprehension 
 than the rising or the setting of the sun and the stars. 
 
 Very many things are thus withdrawn from the region of the mar- 
 velous, and now take their places in the ordinary. course of events. 
 The world no longer believes that the harvest-fields are under the con- 
 ‘trol of Ceres; that Neptune rules on the sea; that Zolus controls the 
 winds; that Dryads and Fawns preside in the groves; or that the 
 healing properties of medicine are to be traced to the god Asculapius 
 —and the woods, and the groves, and the lakes are deserted; the 
 temples of Ceres, and Neptune, and Bacchus, and Atsculapius are 
 no longer crowded by worshipers, and more substantial and perma- 
 nent honors are rendered to scientific men who have discovered the 
 Jaws by which the phenomena are explained than were rendered to 
 the imaginary divinities. 
 
 Science, then, just in proportion as it has made progress in the 
 world, has contributed to this change of opinion; has relieved the 
 world of the fears attendant on superstition; and has contributed, if 
 not always to the introduction and establishment of true religion, at 
 least to the removal of superstition and idolatry. ‘The mythology of 
 Greece can never be restored; the Parthenon can neyer be rebuilt ; 
 the Pantheon can never be again a temple for heathen gods and hea- 
 then worship. 
 
 (2.) The progress of civilization may be referred to as a second 
 cause of this change. This, indeed, would include, in some measure, 
 that which has above been adverted to, the progress of science, for 
 that enters, of course, largely into the progress of civilization. The 
 point to be now adverted to is that which has been dwelt upon so much 
 by Lecky, and which springs from the nature of the case, that, up to 
 a certain period at least, in proportion as society advances in civiliza- 
 tion, the belief in the marvelous disappears, and that the very progress 
 of civilization tends to prepare the minds of men to disbelieve in the 
 supernatural altogether, or leads to Rationalism—to Rationalism in a 
 proper use of that word; to ‘‘ Rationalism,” in fact, in the sense in 
 which that word is commonly employed. ! 
 
 And yet, with all the concessions which should be made on that 
 point, it would be a fair inquiry how far the mere progress of civiliza- 
 tion would in fact conduct the human mind, or what, in this respect, 
 would be its legitimate influence on the world. It could not fail to be 
 noticed in such an inquiry that mere civilization has never destroyed 
 the love of the marvelous and the belief in the supernatural; that the 
 belief of the marvelous and the supernatural prevailed under the high- 
 est forms of civilization in Greece and Rome; that it prevails in the 
 most civilized nations of the world at this day ; and that, if one form of 
 
APPENDIX. 413 
 
 belief in the supernatural is banished to any extent from the minds of 
 men by an advanced civilization, another form may take its place not 
 more reconcilable with the sober and chastened laws of science. It 
 can not be forgotten that in this age—an age which we regard as more — 
 civilized than any past period, certainly as more civilized than the 
 ages in which a belief in necromancy, divination, and witchcraft pre- 
 yailed, and, in the apprehension of many in this age, more civilized 
 and advanced than the ages when there was a general faith in mira- 
 cles, there is a wide-spread belief in mesmerism, in spirit-rapping, in 
 table-turning, and in ‘‘ spiritualism” —in actual converse with, and 
 communication with, the spirits of departed men, and that this belief 
 is by no means confined to those who lay no claims to a refined civil- 
 ization, or who are of the most humble walks of life. Scientific men; 
 literary men of no mean name—judges, physicians, lawyers, and ‘‘ phi- 
 losophers,” are found in the class of those who believe in these marvels ; 
 and perhaps the very home of this faith may be found in the most en- 
 lightened cities of our own country, in the very vicinity of the most 
 celebrated seats of learning, or in the most refined walks of life.* Yet, 
 while these things are so, it can not be doubted that the advancing 
 - civilization of the world has had an important influence in narrowing 
 the circle of the supernatural and the marvelous, nor that there is a 
 tendency in such civilization to suggest the inquiry whether a perfect 
 civilization would not remove all traces of the miraculous and the 
 marvelous from the world. 
 
 (3.) In connection with this, it is to be observed that there has been 
 a course of events in the world that has tended to disabuse mankind 
 of unfounded claims to a favored and peculiar acquaintance with the 
 secrets of nature, to a compact with powerful spiritual beings, to inter- 
 course with the spirits of the departed, and to the special favor of God 
 bestowed on those who were supposed to be remarkable for their piety 
 —the ‘‘ saints,” and this fact has silently and imperceptibly operated 
 to lead men to doubt the reality of any direct divine interposition in 
 human affairs. 
 
 (a) The change in the world on the subject of witchcraft has tended 
 to produce this. Formerly the belief in witchcraft was not less uni- 
 versal than the belief in miracles, and the belief was sustained by what 
 
 * It can not be improper to refer to the fact that the inventor of the com- 
 pound blow-pipe in chemistry was a firm believer in mesmerism, spiritual- 
 ism, spirit-rapping, and table-turning, and that he employed no small part of 
 the leisure which he enjoyed in his later years in lecturing on these subjects; 
 in endeavoring to give a scientific form to these disclosures; and in the me- 
 chanical effort to construct a machine, with an appropriate dial, by which the 
 presence of the supernatural agency could be indicated—somewhat on the 
 principle of the magnetic telegraph. 
 
414 APPENDIX. 
 
 was regarded as the highest possible evidence. Faith in that has, to 
 a great extent, passed away, and the question which men now ask is 
 whether the belief in miracles is any better sustained. 
 
 (b) The belief in magic was once as universal as the belief in mira- 
 cles, and the facts were supposed to be sustained by irrefragable evi- 
 dence. ‘That belief has also passed away. It has been removed 
 partly by the application of science to the real explanation of the 
 facts, and partly by the knowledge that the alleged facts were merely 
 the results of cunning and imposture, and men, in like manner, ask 
 the question whether the same solution is not to be applied to the 
 whole subject of miracles. 
 
 (c) Faith in necromancy, sorcery, and divination has passed away. 
 The world has come to believe that all the facts that were connected 
 with such claims are to be traced to a hallucination of the mind, or to 
 well-executed imposture, and they ask whether the same solution may 
 not be applied to all pretended miracles. 
 
 (d) The faith of the world in regard to the reappearance of the 
 dead, and to the visitation of the gods to earth, has passed away, and 
 men have learned to ask whether the same result is not to follow in 
 regard to all the divine manifestations to our world, and to the alleged 
 resurrection of Lazarus and of Christ. 
 
 (e) The belief in the early miracles of the Christian Church subse- 
 quently to the time of the apostles has passed away, and men have 
 learned to ask significantly what should make a difference between ~ 
 those miracles and the miracles of the New Testament. 
 
 (f) Faith in the miracles of the Roman Catholic Church exists 
 nowhere outside of that communion, and to a very limited extent, 
 apart from the priesthood, within, and the world is beginning to ask 
 why the miracles of the Bible should not share the same fate. 
 
 Those who defend the miracles of the Bible, it is said, admit the 
 fact that the pretended miracles of the Egyptians in the time of 
 Moses were false; that the miracles of the early Christian Church 
 were false; that the miracles of the Catholic Church are false—that, 
 in fact, men have often been imposed upon in the belief of such won- 
 ders, and they ask why should not the principles which they apply so 
 unsparingly to these pretended wonders be applied to all claims of 
 miraculous powers. 
 
 (g) There has been, at the same time, a vast decline of priestly 
 power and influence tending to the same result. The world has come 
 to believe that alike among the heathen, and in the early Christian 
 Church, and in the Roman Catholic communion, the belief in mira- 
 cles has been kept up, in a good measure, by the influence and the 
 arts of the priesthood. Outside of the Catholic Church that belief is 
 
APPENDIX. 415 
 now universal in regard to the pretended miracles in that Church, and 
 the belief that the credit of the miracles in the early Church was to 
 be traced to priestly power has become nearly universal. 
 
 Priestly power, as such, is fast dying away in the world—alike 
 among the heathen, in the Roman Catholic portion of the world, in 
 the Greek Church, and in the Protestant world. In proportion as 
 science advances, and the world becomes acquainted with the arts 
 which have so often characterized the priesthood of all religions, the 
 mere power of a priesthood as such dies away. ‘The power of influ- 
 encing men by forms and ceremonies; by processions and benedic- 
 tions; by splendid vestments and pomp; by the belief that truth 
 flows only from the lips of an anointed priesthood and grace from their 
 hands, dies out among men, and they are led to ask, since so much of 
 religion has undeniably owed its power to the unfounded claims of a 
 priesthood, whether the whole of it can not be resolved into such a 
 belief. 
 
 It may be true, indeed, that the real influence of ministers of relig- 
 ion is adyancing in other forms, and is keeping pace with the progress 
 of the world, but it is not as priests, or in virtue of any supposed he- 
 reditary holiness, or of any superiority over other men as intrusted 
 with the power of pardoning sin, or communicating grace, or deliver- 
 ing dogmas to mankind to be received on their authority, but it is as 
 men who are abreast of their age in intelligence, as entitled to confi- 
 dence from their moral worth, and to respect for their learning. 
 There is a foundation in the human heart for respect and honor 
 toward the ministers of religion when they rely for their influence on 
 these things; all other respect for them is fast dying away, and with 
 the decline of that profound reverence for a priesthood that character- 
 izes this age as distinguished from former ages, there has been a cor- 
 responding decline on the whole subject of faith in the supernatural 
 and the marvelous. Men refuse to embrace doctrines and dogmas in 
 religion on different grounds from those on which they embrace truth 
 on other subjects, not by a reference to miracles, and signs, and won- 
 ders, but as founded on reason, and as commending itself to their 
 sober sense of what is right and true. » 
 
 Perhaps the present state of the world on this subject, as indica- 
 ting an existing state of mind, can not be better described than in the 
 following passage from the writer to whom [I have so often referred : 
 
 ‘*Generation after generation the province of the miraculous has 
 contracted, and the circle of skepticism has expanded. Of the two 
 great divisions of these events, one has completely perished. Witch- 
 craft, and diabolical possession, and diabolical disease have long since 
 passed into the region of fables. To disbelieve them was at first the 
 
416 APPENDIX. 
 
 eccentricity of a few isolated thinkers; it was then the distinction of 
 the educated classes in the most advanced nations; it is now the com- 
 mon sentiment of all classes in all countries in Europe. The count- 
 less miracles that were once associated with every holy relic and with 
 eyery village shrine have rapidly and silently disappeared. Year by 
 year the incredulity became more manifest, even when the theological 
 profession was unchanged. Their numbers continually lessened, until 
 they at last almost ceased, and any attempt to revive them has been 
 treated with a general and undisguised contempt. ‘The miracles of 
 the fathers are passed over with an incredulous scorn or with a sig- 
 nificant silence. The rationalistic spirit has even attempted to ex- 
 plain away those which are recorded in Scripture, and it has materi- 
 ally altered their position in the systems of theology. In all countries, 
 in all churches, in all parties, among men of every variety of character 
 and opinion, we have found the tendency existing. In each nation 
 its development has been a measure of intellectual activity, and has 
 passed in regular course through the different strata of society. Dur- 
 ing the last century it has advanced with a vastly accelerated rapidity ; 
 the old lines of demarkation haye been every where obscured, and the 
 spirit of Rationalism has become the great centre to which the intcl- 
 lect of Europe is manifestly tending. If we trace the progress of the: 
 movement from its origin to the present day, we find that it has com- 
 pletely alsered the whole aspect and complexion of religion. When it 
 began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the 
 range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question ; it was 
 impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other 
 hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every 
 order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all 
 its parts. They excited no skepticism and no surprise. ‘The miracu- 
 lous element pervaded all literature, explained all difficulties, conse- 
 crated all doctrines. Every unusual phenomenon was immediately 
 referred to a supernatural agency, not because there was a passion for 
 the improbable, but because such an explanation seemed far more 
 simple and easy of belief than the obscure theories of science. 
 
 ‘In the present day, Christianity is regarded as a system which 
 courts the strictest investigation, and which, among many other fune- 
 tions, was designed to vivify and stimulate all the energies of man, 
 The idea of the miraculous, which a superficial observer might haye 
 once deemed its most prominent characteristic, has been driven from 
 almost all its intrenchments, and now quivers faintly and yc 
 through the mists of eighteen hundred years.’* 
 
 II. Such, then, being the facts in regard to the change of belief in 
 
 * Lecky, History of Rationalism, vol. i., p. 194, 195. 
 
APPENDIX. ALT 
 
 the world on the subject of the marvelous and the supernatural, and 
 such being the causes by which this change is to be explained, the 
 inquiry meets us whether the miracles of the Bible can not be ex- 
 plained in the same manner, and whether they may not in like man- 
 ner take their place with the illusions and deceptions of former ages. 
 It is clear that if they can thus be explained, and if there is no stron- 
 ger historical evidence in their favor than could be adduced for those 
 things which haye been referred to, they will soon, in the estimation 
 of mankind, take the same place, and faith in the supernatural will 
 wholly cease among men. Whether they can thus be explained is the 
 point now to be considered. If they can not thus be explained, then 
 the evidence commonly relied on for their support will be unaffected 
 by the changes which have occurred on other subjects, and will remain 
 in all the force attached to undisputed evidence on other well-attested 
 historical facts in the past. 
 
 (1.) The miracles of the Bible can not be explained by the opera- 
 tion of natural laws, or, in other words, can not be brought within the 
 range of natural laws. I mean by this, that, if the facts are admitted, 
 there are no powers of nature known to man that would explain or ac- 
 count for them; that is, they could not be arranged and classified 
 under any of the natural sciences. If Lazarus was raised from the 
 grave; if Christ rose from the dead; if the blind were restored to 
 sight by a word or a touch, there are no laws of science—chemistry, 
 natural philosophy, galvanism, electricity, or magnetism to which such 
 facts can be shown to belong; there is no power in connection with ~ 
 those sciences to produce such effects now; there are no principles 
 suggested by those sciences which will explain them. 
 
 On this point I made the following remarks in the Lecture on Mira- 
 cles, which it seems necessary to repeat here, in order that a connect- 
 ed view may be taken of the subject: 
 
 Science has not advanced so far as to explain the miracles of the 
 New Testament on any known principles, as it has in these matters, 
 nor has it made any approximation to it. Nay, just so far as it has 
 gone it has demonstrated that those miracles can not be explained on 
 any principles known, or likely to be known, to science—gravitation, 
 attraction, repulsion, electricity, galvanism, or the healing properties 
 of vegetables or minerals. The chemist does not open the eyes of the 
 blind by a touch; he does not heal the sick by a word; he does not 
 raise the dead by the blow-pipe or by galvanism. In the language of 
 Mr. Mansel, ‘‘ The advance of physical science tends to strengthen 
 rather than to weaken our conviction of the supernatural character of 
 the Christian miracles. In whatever proportion our knowledge of 
 physical causation is limited, and the number of unknown natural 
 
 S 2 
 
418 APPENDIX. 
 
 agents comparatively large, in the same proportion is the probability 
 that some of these unknown causes, acting in some unknown manner, 
 may have given rise to the alleged marvels. But this probability di- 
 minishes when each newly-discovered agent, as its properties become 
 known, is shown to be inadequate to the production of the supposed 
 effects, and as the residue of unknown causes, which might produce 
 them, becomes smaller and smaller. We ‘are told, indeed, that the 
 ‘inevitable progress of research must, within a longer or shorter pe- 
 riod, unravel all that seems most marvelous ;* but we may be permit- 
 ted to doubt the relevancy of the remark to the present case, until it 
 has been shown that the advance of science has in some degree en- 
 abled men to perform the miracles performed by Christ. When the 
 inevitable progress of research shall have enabled men of modern times 
 to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still tempests with a word, 
 to raise the dead to life, to die themselves, and to rise again, we may 
 allow that the same causes might possibly have been called into opera- 
 tion ten thousand years earlier by some great man in advance of his 
 age. But, until this is done, the unraveling of the marvelous in other 
 phenomena only serves to leave these works in their solitary grandeur, 
 as wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and unapproachable 
 by all the knowledge and all the power of man. ‘The appearance of a 
 comet or the fall of an aerolite may be reduced by the advance of sci- 
 ence from a supposed supernatural to a natural occurrence, and this 
 reduction furnishes a reasonable presumption that other phenomena 
 of a like character will in time meet with a like explanation. But the 
 reyerse is the case with respect to those phenomena which are narrated 
 as produced by personal agency. In proportion as the science of to- 
 day surpasses that of former generations, so is the improbability that 
 any man could have done in past times, by natural means, works which 
 no skill of the present age is able to imitate.’’+ 
 
 In addition to these observations, I would now, for the farther illus- 
 tration of the subject, make the following remarks : 
 
 (a) If the miracles of the New Testament were in themselves sus- 
 ceptible of explanation in this manner, it is plain that the authors of 
 the Bible, or those who wrought the miracles, were not, in fact, so far 
 in advance of their own age, or that they had no such knowledge of 
 scientific principles—of the laws of nature—as to enable them to make 
 use of this knowledge in working the alleged miracles. There were 
 events in the Middle Ages, in connection with ‘‘ magic,” which seemed 
 to the masses of men to be miracles; which surpassed all their power 
 of producing or comprehending them; and which conveyed, design- 
 edly or undesignedly, to the multitudes the impression that those who 
 
 * Essays and Reviews, p. 109. t+ Aids to Faith, p. 21, 22. 
 
APPENDIX. 419 
 
 wrought them were in league with higher intelligences, or were en- 
 dowed with supernatural powers. Those events are now susceptible 
 of an easy and natural explanation, as has been shown amply by ftir 
 David Brewster in his work on ‘‘ Magic.” Roger Bacon, for exam- 
 ple, was so far in advance of his age in the sciences, that, on the 
 ground of this, he might readily have obtained a reputation for being 
 able to work miracles; and if we were to suppose that Roger Bacon, 
 or any of his contemporaries, had the knowledge which is now pos- 
 sessed by those skilled in chemistry ; or could haye exhibited the won- 
 derful and sudden transformations of matter now exhibited in the la- 
 boratory of the chemist; or that they had the power of multiplying 
 copies of books, with the strictest exactness, almost in an instant; or 
 that they could haye multiplied accurate impressions of the human 
 countenance, or of hills, and vales, and trees, and animals, by the ac- 
 tion of light; or that they could have transmitted thought and lan- 
 guage in a moment over hills and vales, across rivers and along the 
 beds of oceans, it would have been easy for such men to have estab- 
 lished the reputation of being workers of miracles. But, apart from 
 all other considerations, now, the authors of the Bible had no such 
 pretensions to knowledge in advance of their age. They were not in a 
 land distinguished for science. They had received no scientific edu- 
 cation. They had, so far as appears, no scientific genius. ‘They had 
 nothing which constitutes the ‘‘ apparatus” of science now. All ac- 
 counts agree in the fact that they were plain, unlettered men; nor does 
 any thing which they ever said, or wrote, or did, indicate that they 
 had any acquaintance whatever with even the. very lowest rudiments 
 of scientific knowledge. 
 
 (b) The principles of science can not be so applied as to explain the 
 miracles of the New Testament. Science makes no approximation to 
 an explanation. 
 
 This remark is especially true in regard to the resurrection of the 
 dead, and is of special importance, because a single case of resto- 
 ration to life settles the whole question. If Lazarus was raised 
 from the dead, the Christian religion is from God. Science has 
 settled the principle so that it is now an admitted axiom among 
 all scientific men that the production of /ife is beyond the power 
 of mere science. Whatever life may be, and whether it will ever 
 be true that men will be able to explain and define what it zs, it is 
 reduced to a certainty that men, by the application of. scientific prin- 
 ciples, can not produce it. No approximation has been made to the 
 power of causing it to exist where there has not been a germ or an 
 ovum, or where it does not already exist, though suspended. Animal- 
 cules that seemed to have been dead for ages, and that may be dried 
 
420 APPENDIX. 
 
 and pounded, may be made to revive by the application of moisture ; 
 a grain of wheat that may have been hidden in the folds of an Egyp- 
 tian mummy for three thousand years may be made to grow, but no 
 power of man can originate life; none can cause it to exist again when 
 it has become extinct. Until that is done, it may be regarded as 
 settled that the miracles of the New Testament can not be explained 
 by the application of the principles of science. If such a thing is 
 claimed as possible, we may at least demand that the same thing 
 should be done now by scientific men ; for assuredly it can not be pre- 
 tended that in true scientific knowledge the apostles were superior to 
 the scientific men of this generation. If, therefore, it could be shown, 
 as Renan supposed, that the healing of Peter’s wife’s mother could be 
 explained by some power of mesmerism, yet we have a right, in order 
 to set aside the evidence for the miracles of the New Testament, to de- 
 mand that there shall be some unmistakable act of raising up the dead 
 —where there is no doubt of the death—as in the case of Lazarus and 
 the Savior; and, to make the argument complete, that it shall be done 
 by a word—by some command which the scientific man has over the 
 dead, and the grave, and the invisible world. As it is certain that 
 men have never done this, and as it is certain that the scientific men 
 of this age, or of future ages, will not even attempt this, it may be re- 
 garded as settled that the miracles of the New Testament can not be 
 explained by the application of any principles of science, or can not 
 be brought under the range of natural laws. 
 
 (2.) The miracles of the Bible can not be disposed of in the way in 
 which the belief in witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery has been. 
 The explanation which has been applied to these things, and which 
 has so entirely modified or revolutionized the faith of mankind on 
 these subjects, can not be applied to the miracles of the Bible. In 
 other words, we can not take the explanations; the course of reason- 
 ing; the changes produced by civilization, and the results of calm and 
 sober thinking on these subjects, by which so material a change has 
 been produced in the faith of mankind in regard to these matters, and 
 by the application of the same process reach the same results in re- 
 spect to the miracles of the Bible. 
 
 This is a very material point in the argument; for 7f the reasoning 
 which has changed the faith of the world in regard to the marvelous 
 and the supernatural on these subjects is of sufficient force to change 
 the faith of the world in a// that is supernatural, including the mira- 
 cles of the Bible as well as other things, then it is manifest that faith 
 in miracles will soon occupy the same place as faith in witchcraft, and 
 necromancy, and sorcery; and as it is now certain that the faith in 
 witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery which was once held in the world 
 
APPENDIX. 421 
 
 can not be restored in the present state of civilization, and still less 
 under the advanced civilization to which the world is tending, so, if 
 the arguments and explanations which have banished the belief in 
 witchcraft from the world can be legitimately applied to the miracles 
 of the Bible, it will follow that the world is tending rapidly and iney- 
 itably to the highest point of Rationalism, where a// faith in the super- 
 natural and the marvelous shall cease among men. ‘That this result 
 is desired by many there can be no doubt; that it is secretly believed 
 by many that it will be so there can be as little doubt; and that the 
 tendency of the statements on the causes which have led to the chan- 
 ges in the opinions of the world on these subjects, as they are found in 
 the histories of Rationalism, is to lead to the apprehension that this 
 will be so, there can be as little doubt. No man can rise up from a 
 history of Rationalism, and of the changes which have occurred in re- 
 gard to the belief of mankind in the marvelous, without asking the 
 question whether the legitimate result of all this is not to remove all 
 faith in the marvelous and the supernatural from the minds of men. 
 
 What, then, is witchcraft? What is sorcery, divination, necro~ 
 mancy?, By what means has the faith of mankind in these things 
 been shaken? Are the same processes of unbelief applicable to the 
 miracles of the Bible? 
 
 Witchcraft, divination, sorcery, necromancy, though they differ spe- 
 cifically from each other, yet so far partake of the same general na- 
 ture that they can be grouped together, and they so far resemble each 
 other, and so far depend on the same things, that the same explana- 
 tion in regard to their origin, their prevalence, and their removal from 
 the faith of mankind will be found applicable to them all. It would 
 be impossible that one should retain its hold on the faith of mankind 
 if all the others, or any of the others, should be proved to be a delusion 
 and an imposture. The question is whether the miracles of the Bible 
 will share the same destiny. 
 
 I haye stated the difficulty on this subject in the Lecture on Mira- 
 cles (p. 161-165), and perhaps so stated it as to have led to the in- 
 quiry—perhaps @ painful inquiry—on the minds of some, whether all 
 that is said there might not also be said about miracles. As there 
 ean be no desire of concealment in a candid inquiry after truth on 
 - any subject, and as it is important to have the difficulty fairly before 
 the mind, I shall copy here what was said on the subject in the Lec- 
 ture. 
 
 A more material and important question still is, Whether there is 
 any stronger evidence in favor of miracles than there isin favor of 
 witchcraft, of sorcery, of the reappearance of the dead, of ghosts, of 
 apparitions? Is not the evidence in favor of these as strong as any 
 
422 APPENDIX. 
 
 that can be adduced in favor of miracles? Have not these things 
 been matters of universal belief? In what respects is the evidence in 
 favor of the miracles of the Bible stronger than that which can be ad- 
 duced in favor of witchcraft and sorcery? Does it differ in nature 
 and in degree; and if it differs, is it not in favor of witchcraft and 
 sorcery? Has not the evidence in favor of the latter been derived 
 from as competent and credible witnesses? Has it not been brought 
 to us from those who saw the facts alleged? .Has it not been subject- 
 ed to a close scrutiny in courts of justice—to cross-examinations—to 
 tortures? Has it not convinced those of highest legal attainments ; 
 those accustomed to sift testimony; those who understood the true 
 principles of evidence? Has not the evidence in fayor of witchcraft 
 and sorcery had, what the evidence in favor of miracles has not had, 
 the advantage of strict judicial investigation, and been subjected to 
 trial, where evidence should be, before courts of law? Have not the 
 most eminent judges in the most civilized and enlightened courts of 
 Kturope and America admittetl the force of such evidence, and on the 
 ground of it committed great numbers of innocent persons to the gal- 
 lows or to the stake? 
 
 An extract or two from Lecky, in his History of Rationalism in 
 Kurope, will show the nature of the difficulty and the force of the ob- 
 jection, though the remarks made by him are in no way designed to 
 support the cause of infidelity: ‘‘ For more than fifteen hundred 
 years it was universally believed that the Bible established, in the 
 clearest manner, the reality of the crime [of witchcraft], and that an 
 amount of eyidence, so varied and so ample as to preclude the very 
 possibility of doubt, attested its continuance and its prevalence. ‘The 
 clergy denounced it with all the emphasis of authority. The legisla- 
 tors of almost every land enacted laws for its punishment. Acute 
 judges, whose lives were spent in sifting evidence, investigated the 
 question on countless occasions, and condemned the accused. ‘Tens 
 of thousands of victims perished by the most agonizing and protracted 
 torments without exciting the faintest compassion. Nations that 
 were completely separated by position, by interests, and by character, 
 on this one question were united. In almost every province of Ger- 
 many, but especially in those where clerical influence predominated, 
 the persecution raged with fearful intensity. even thousand victims 
 are said to have been burned at Tréves, six hundred by the single 
 Bishop of Bamberg, and eight hundred in a single year in the bishop- 
 rie of Wurtzburg. In France, decrees were*passed on the subject by 
 the Parliament of Paris, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rheims, Rouen, Dijon, 
 and Rennes, and they were all followed by a harvest of blood. At 
 Toulouse, the seat of the Inquisition, four hundred persons perished 
 
APPENDIX. 423 
 
 for sorcery at a single execution, and fifty at Douay in a single year. 
 Remy, a judge of Nancy, boasted that he had put to death eight hund- 
 red witches in sixteen years. The executions that took place at Paris 
 in a few months were, in the emphatic words of an old writer, ‘ almost 
 infinite.” The fugitives who escaped to Spain were there seized and 
 burned by the Inquisition. In Italy a thousand persons were execut- 
 ed in a single year in the province of Como; in the other parts of the 
 country the severity of the inquisitors at last created an absolute re- 
 bellion. In Geneva five hundred alleged witches were executed in 
 three months; forty-eight were burned at Constance or Ravensburg, 
 and eighty in the little town of Valery, in Savoy. The Church of 
 Rome proclaimed in every way that was in her power the reality and 
 the continued existence of the crime.” 
 
 The writer from whom I have made this extract adds: ‘‘It is, I 
 think, difficult to examine the subject with impartiality, without com- 
 ing to the conclusion that the historical evidence establishing the real- 
 ity of witchcraft is so vast and so varied that it is impossible to disbe- 
 lieve it without what on other subjects we should deem the most ex- 
 traordinary rashness. The defenders of the belief, who were often 
 men of great and distinguished talent, maintained that there was no 
 fact in all history more fully attested, and that to reject it would be to 
 strike at the root of all historical evidence of the miraculous. The 
 subject was examined in tens of thousands of cases, in almost every 
 eountry of Europe, by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers 
 and ecclesiastics of the age on the scene at the time when the alleged 
 facts had taken place, and with the assistance of innumerable sworn 
 witnesses. The judges had no motive whatever to desire the con- 
 demnation of the accused; and as conviction would be followed by 
 a fearful death, they had the strongest motives to exercise their pow- 
 er with caution and deliberation. In our day it may be said with 
 confidence that it would-be altogether impossible for such an amount 
 of evidence to accumulate round a conception which had no basis in 
 fact. If we considered witchcraft probable, a hundredth part of the 
 evidence we possess would have placed it beyond the region of doubt. 
 If it were a natural, but a very improbable fact, our reluctance to 
 believe it would have been completely stifled by the multiplicity of 
 the proofs.’”* 
 
 In reference to this point, I now submit the following remarks : 
 
 (a) Witcheraft, sorcery, divination, necromancy, all depend essen- 
 tially on one idea—the idea of a compact with created spirits ; not 
 with God. 'The idea is always that of a compact, of an understand- 
 ing, or of an alliance for certain purposes, and the accomplishing of 
 
 * See Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, vol.i., p. 28, 34, 36, 37, 88, 89. 
 
4904 APPENDIX. 
 
 certain things to which the unaided human powers are inadequate, 
 but which may be quite within the range of the power of such inyisi- 
 ble beings. ‘Thus, in necromancy, the foundation of all that is im- 
 plied in it is a desire—that desire so natural to man—to penetrate the 
 future. The knowledge necessary for this purpose is not in the power 
 of the most gifted man among the living,* but it is supposed that it 
 must be in the possession of the dead—of those who now reside in the 
 invisible world, and that a compact may be made with them by which 
 that knowledge may be imparted to those who are parties in the agree- 
 ment. ‘Thus, also, in divination, the idea is essentially the same. It 
 is defined by Webster to be ‘‘a foretelling of future events, or discoy- 
 ering things secret or obscure, by the aid of superior beings, or by oth- 
 er than human means.” ‘‘ The ancient heathen philosophers,” says 
 he, ‘‘ divided divination into two kinds, natural and artificial. Natu- 
 ral divination was supposed to be effected by a kind of inspiration or 
 divine afflatus; artificial divination was effected by certain rites, ex- 
 periments, or obsservations, as by sacrifices, cakes, flour, wine,” etc. 
 The main idea was, that there was some aid derived from spirits supe- 
 rior to man with whom this knowledge was, and from whom it could 
 be obtained by favored persons by compact, or by the performance of 
 certain rites of homage or honor rendered to them. 
 
 The same idea was at the foundation of all that there was in witch- 
 craft—a subject in its bearing on the matter before us of much more 
 importance than either necromancy, divination, or sorcery. Few per- 
 sons, Rationalists or skeptics, would now refer either to necromancy, 
 divination, or sorcery as having any evidence in their favor which 
 would seriously affect the evidence in regard to miraculous eyents ; 
 the subject of witchcraft, however, as we have seen, does materially 
 affect the whole question of evidence, and particularly the evidence in 
 regard to supernatural events, since the proof of witchcraft was | 
 brought before courts sitting in judgment on the very cases; since 
 that proof was so thoroughly examined by men learned in the law, and 
 accustomed to sift evidence; since the alleged facts were supposed to 
 be established by incontrovertible evidence ; since such trials involved 
 the question of life or death; and since so many innocent persons 
 were actually put to death on the ground of such evidence. 
 
 A witch is defined by Webster to be ‘‘a woman who, by compact 
 with thedevil, practices sorcery or enchantment.” ‘The essential idea 
 always is that of a compact or agreement with the devil, or with evil 
 spirits, by whose aid things are done which are beyond the natural 
 power of those who practiced witchcraft, or which could not be pro- 
 
 * For an illustration of this thought I may be permitted to refer to the Lec- 
 ture on Prophecy—Lecture VI. 
 
APPENDIX. 4235 
 
 duced by natural laws, and in which the acts, therefore, are, so far, 
 miraculous or supernatural. Witchcraft, however, is NEVER associ- 
 ated with the idea of divine help or divine power. It never implies a 
 compact with God. It is never supposed that what is done is done by 
 his power. It is always something within the range of beings inferior 
 to God, but superior to man. It is, in this respect, wholly distin- 
 guished from the idea of a miracle properly so called, where, as we 
 have seen, the idea is that of an event where the only antecedent is 
 the will and power of God. 
 
 The following things, therefore, enter into the idea of witchcraft, 
 and in getting rid of witchcraft by the process of Rationalism, the 
 world has delivered itself from these, and these only: (1.) There is a 
 compact with some spirit or spirits inferior to God, but superior to 
 man. (2.) The spirit with which the compact is made is always a 
 bad, or an eyil spirit—as we never associate the idea of witchcraft 
 with a good ‘‘ demon,” or with a holy angel. (3..) The person who is 
 supposed to make the compact, or who is competent to enter into it, 
 is commonly believed to be a woman, and usually an old woman. If 
 there has been a belief in wizards, it has been rare, and the common 
 idea in such a case is merely that of a juggler, a conjuror, or an en- 
 chanter. (4.) The matter which pertains to witchcraft is usyally some 
 trifling matter; some petty annoyance; some small injury done to prop- 
 erty ; some disease brought upon cattle; rarely, if ever, any thing that 
 terminates in death. It never has respect to a work of beneficence or 
 mercy ; neyer is employed in healing diseases; never is alleged to be 
 sufficient to give sight to the blind; never lays claim to the power of 
 raising the dead. In these respects, also, it is distinguished by broad 
 lines of demarkation from all proper ideas of a miracle. 
 
 (6) The alleged facts in witchcraft were usually such as could, and 
 did occur, under the operation of natural causes. All the injuries 
 done; all the diseases inflicted; all the annoyances employed ; all the 
 calamities that fell upon cattle or upon men; all the blightings of the 
 harvest ; all that was involved in the idea of pinching or burning—of 
 palsy, or of withered arms or hands, or a shriveled skin—all these are 
 things which do occur in the world with no necessity of supposing any 
 intervention of superior beings. Not one of them implies, of neces- 
 sity, the agency of supernatural power ; not one of them, as a fact, lies 
 beyond the range of explanation from natural causes. They are, 
 therefore, as facts, wholly without the range of miracles. 
 
 (c) The facts in the alleged case of witchcraft are commonly easily 
 established, and there was no difficulty in proving them in the courts ; 
 in the matter of miracles the main difficulty is in regard to the facts 
 themselves—whether the sun and moon actually stood still at the com- 
 
426 APPENDIX. 
 
 mand of Joshua; whether the lame man at the pool of Bethesda was 
 actually healed; whether Lazarus was actually dead, and was raised 
 from the dead; whether the Lord Jesus actually came to life again 
 after he had been put to death on the cross. But the alleged facts as 
 pertaining to witchcraft are such as may be easily established—that 
 is, what witches are accused of doing may be matter of clear and defi- 
 nite proof. That a person is afflicted with some form of disease; that 
 property is destroyed ; that mischief has occurred in regard to a man’s 
 cattle, or that there may be some form .of prevalent disease among 
 them; that grain about to ripen may be suddenly blighted in the 
 field—all these may be points of fact that could be easily established, 
 and about which there need be no doubt. 
 
 As an illustration of this point, we may take the case of Richard 
 III., as it is stated in history, and as it is represented by Shakspeare. 
 The scene is described by Mr. Hume (History of England, vol. ii., 
 p. 174) in the following manner : 
 
 ‘*The Duke of Gloucester was capable of committing the most 
 bloody and treacherous murders with the utmost coolness and in- 
 difference. On taking his place at the council-table, he appeared in 
 the easiest and most jovial humor imaginable. He seemed to indulge 
 himself in familiar conversation with the counselors before they 
 should enter on business; and, having paid some compliments to 
 Morton, bishop of Ely, on the good and early strawberries which he 
 raised in his garden at Holborn, he begged the favor of having a dish 
 of them, which that prelate immediately dispatched a servant to bring 
 tohim. The Protector then left the council, as if called away by some 
 other business; but, soon after returning, with an angry and inflamed 
 countenance, he asked them what punishment those deserved that had 
 plotted against his life, who was so nearly related to the king, and was 
 intrusted with the administration of government? Hastings replied 
 that they merited the punishment of traitors. These traitors, cried 
 the Protector, are the sorceress, my brother’s wife, and Jane Shore, 
 his mistress, with others, their associates: see to what a condition 
 they have reduced me by their incantations and witchcraft: upon 
 which he laid bare his arm, all shriveled and decayed. But the coun- 
 selors, who knew that this infirmity had attended him from his birth, 
 looked on each other with amazement, and above all Lord Hastings, 
 who, as he had, since Edward's death, engaged in an intrigue with 
 Jane Shore, was naturally anxious concerning the issue of these extra- 
 ordinary proceedings. Certainly, my lord, said he, if they be guilty 
 of these crimes they deserve the severest punishment. And do you 
 reply to me, exclaimed the Protector, with your ifs and your ands? 
 You are the chief abettor of that witch Shore! You are yourself a 
 
APPENDIX. AD™ 
 
 traitor ; and I swear by St. Paul that I will not dine before your head 
 be brought me. He struck the table with his hand; armed men 
 rushed in at the signal; the counselors were thrown into the utmost 
 consternation ; and one of the guards, as if by accident or mistake, 
 aimed a blow with a poll-axe at Lord Stanley, who, aware of the dan- 
 ger, slunk under the table; and though he saved his life, received a 
 severe wound in the head, in the Protector’s presence. Hastings was 
 seized, was hurried away, and instantly beheaded on a timber-log, 
 which lay in the court of the ‘Tower.” 
 Shakspeare describes the scene in the following words: 
 ** Gloucester. I pray you all, tell me what they deserve 
 That do conspire my death with devilish plots 
 Of damned witchcraft ; and that have prevailed 
 Upon my body with their hellish charms? 
 Hastings. The tender love I bear your grace, my lord, 
 Makes me most forward in this noble presence 
 To doom the offenders: Whosoe’er they be, 
 I say, my lord, they have deserved death. 
 Gloucester. Then be your eyes the witness of their evil, 
 Look how Iam bewitched; behold mine arm 
 Is, like a blasted sapling, withered up: 
 And this is Edward’s wife, that monstrous witch, 
 Consorted with that harlot, strumpet Shore, 
 That by their witchcraft thus have marked me.” 
 Richard ITT., Act iii., Scene iy. 
 
 Now, about the fact of the withered arm, there could have been no 
 doubt. ‘The evidence was at hand. No one would call it in question ; 
 no one would dare to dispute it. That fact could have been proved 
 before any court of justice as clearly as any of the facts to which Mr. 
 Lecky refers when he says, ‘‘ The subject [of witchcraft] was exam- 
 ined in tens of thousands of cases, in almost every country of Europe, 
 by tribunals which included the acutest lawyers and ecclesiastics of the 
 age on the scene at the time when the alleged facts had taken place, 
 and with the assistance of innumerable sworn witnesses.” 
 
 (d) The main point, therefore, in witcheraft—the point on which 
 the whole turned, and on which it differed from all the questions con- 
 nected with miracles, was in CONNECTING the accused person with THE 
 FACT; in showing that.the accused person was the cause of it, or the 
 author-of it. Thus, in the case of the Duke of Gloucester, the point 
 on which the whole turned was not the fact that the arm of the duke 
 was dried up, or was shriveled—for of that there was no doubt, but it 
 was whether this had been caused by the wife of Edward and Jane 
 Shore. That the duke affirmed; that would have been the point in 
 a court of justice; that was the only point that would have any bear- 
 ing on the question of witchcraft. That point—the connection of the 
 
 . 
 
428 APPENDIX. 
 
 accused persons with the alleged and undoubted facts—was the point 
 which was before the courts—the point on which so many hundreds 
 and thousands were condemned to the flames. 
 
 And yet how could that point be properly brought before a court of 
 justice? What evidence could there be that would bear on it ? 
 
 It is evident that, in this circumstance, there was all that was neces- 
 sary for wide-spread illusion, imposture, and wrong; for the indul- 
 gence of all that there was in a community of suspicion, malignity, 
 and hatred against particular individuals; all that could be devised 
 to keep up the faith of a community in the marvelous; all that was 
 needful to feed and satisfy the desire for the belief in invisible influ- 
 ences, and to perpetuate a prevalent superstition. For what was de- 
 manded in the case was not the proof of certain facts that might be 
 the proper subject of testimony, but the connecting of certain obnox- 
 ious persons with those facts; and as soon and as far as the popular 
 idea connected such facts with a certain class of persons—as aged fe- 
 males-—there would be no lack of witnesses to testify to such a con- 
 nection. 
 
 It is difficult to account for popular illusions; for the fact that a 
 whole community will be affected with such an illusion at the same 
 time; that it may influence all classes of persons; that it will consti- 
 tute the characteristic of a certain period or a certain land; that it 
 will, for the time, break down all the ordinary and sober rules of 
 thinking, and override all that is sacred in truth, and solemn in the 
 forms of oaths. It would be easy to adduce now, in any court of jus- 
 tice, almost innumerable witnesses, of most respectable character, that 
 would testify on oath to the alleged facts in regard to table-moving 
 and spirit-rapping. 'The witnesses of these alleged facts would not by 
 any means be found altogether or mainly among the humblest ranks, 
 or the most ignorant in a community, nor among those who have no 
 proper idea of the solemnity of an oath, or who are ignorant on the 
 subject of evidence. Judges, lawyers, merchants, professors of chem- 
 istry, clergymen —men profoundly learned in the sciences, could be 
 found in large numbers who would testify to the reality of the facts, 
 and who would do it with no ascertainable intention of imposing on 
 mankind. . 
 
 It matters little what is the thing that thus becomes the subject of 
 popular illusion, and it is to be admitted that if the miracles of the 
 New Testament could be brought under this idea, it would not be less 
 difficult to establish their reality than to establish the facts about 
 witchcraft and spirit-rapping. Macaulay, in his History of England, 
 refers to an epidemic of that nature which followed the successful 
 effort of Titus Oates to excite universal alarm in England in regard to 
 
APPENDIX. 429 
 
 the plot to murder the king [Charles II.]; to burn the city of London ; 
 to revolutionize the kingdom, and to restore it to the dominion of the 
 Papacy. ‘‘ Eyery person,” says he, ‘‘ well read in history must have 
 observed that depravity has its temporary modes, which come in and 
 go out like modes of dress and upholstery. It may be doubted 
 whether, in our country, any man ever before the year 1678 invented 
 and related on oath a circumstantial history, altogether fictitious, of a 
 treasonable plot, for the purpose of making himself important by de- 
 stroying men who had given him no provocation. But in the year 
 1678 this execrable crime became the fashion, and continued to be so 
 during the twenty years which followed. Preachers designated it as 
 our peculiar national sin, and prophesied that it would draw on us 
 some awful national judgment. Legislators proposed new punish- 
 ments of terrible severity for this new atrocity. It was not, however, 
 found necessary to resort to those punishments. The fashion changed ; 
 and during the last century and a half there has perhaps not been a 
 single instance of this particular kind of wickedness.’’* 
 
 Any explanation which will account for a popular illusion or a 
 prevalent superstition will account for all the phenomena of witch- 
 craft. The power of such an illusion has often been manifested in the 
 world; perhaps no one has satisfactorily explained the causes. The 
 effect of it is easily understood. It is a species of insanity. It indis- 
 poses the mind for calm and sober thought. It gives reality in the 
 view of the mind to that which is desired. It blunts the moral sense, 
 and dims the perception of truth, and perverts all just notions of testi- 
 mony. It gives reality in the view of the mind to that which is the 
 creation of the imagination, and, under the force of the illusion, anni- 
 hilates for the time all the ordinary feelings of kindness and humanity. 
 It will lead to the endurance of suffering—to the spirit of martyrdom 
 —on the part of those who embrace-the illusion, and it will make them 
 regardless of the severest sufferings of those—though of the tenderest 
 years, and of the gentle sex—on whom the suspicion falls. To pity 
 them in their tortures would be a crime; to aggravate their sufferings 
 would be a merit. In witchcraft it would be a crime of the highest 
 nature to pity those who are in league with the devil; to punish them 
 is to punish the devil himself, and no amount of suffering could be 
 beyond his desert. 
 
 (e) It is apparent, therefore, that there is a broad line of distinction 
 between ‘the miracles of the Bible, and witchcraft, necromancy, sorce- 
 ry, and divination, and that the explanation which would meet the one 
 would not affect the other. It is apparent, also, that in the one case 
 —the case of witchcraft, necromancy,-and sorcery, there may be a 
 
 * History of England, vol. iv., p. 155. 
 
430 APPENDIX. 
 
 change in the public mind that will effectually banish all belief in these 
 things, that will not necessarily, or in fact, affect the public faith in 
 miracles. ‘That state of the public mind—that phenomenon—is, in 
 fact, reached now. ‘The progress of Rationalism has. been such for 
 the past hundred years as almost entirely to. banish all belief in witch- 
 craft and necromancy from the world ; it has not been shown that the 
 change of mind on that subject has in reality affected the faith of man 
 on the subject of miracles, or that they have, in fact, reasoned from 
 the one to the other. Indeed, it may be assumed as undoubtedly true 
 that those who have become skeptical in this age on the subject of 
 miracles are not conscious to themselves that they have been led to re- 
 ject the evidence for miracles because they have seen reason to reject 
 the belief in witchcraft, or because the sentiments of the world haye 
 changed on that subject. This fact I adverted to in the Lecture on 
 Miracles, and I can not but regard it as a remarkable fact. I do not 
 know that even skeptics in religion, or Rationalists in any form, haye 
 urged this as an objection to the faith in miracles, or have stated it as 
 a proposition, as indicating their own state of mind on the subject, 
 that because witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery are delusions, there- 
 fore the miracles of the Bible and all pretended miracles are false. 
 The world at large would not see any connection between such prem- 
 ises and such a conclusion. Skeptics themselves would perceive that 
 the world would not admit the force of such reasoning. As a matter 
 of fact, no such conclusion has been reached from these premises. £0 
 far as appears, the faith of mankind in the miracles of the Bible has 
 not been affected by the change which has occurred in regard to the 
 belief in witchcraft, necromancy, and divination. The change advert- 
 ed to, especially in regard to witchcraft, is a change which has occur- 
 red in the Church not less than in the worid; for the belief in witch- 
 craft pervaded the whole Church, Catholic and Protestant alike, two 
 centuries ago, and the Church, as is often urged by infidels, and as a 
 matter of fact, was most firm in the belief of witchcraft, and most act- 
 ive in the persecution of those who were supposed to be under its in- 
 fluence (see Lecky, vol. i., p. 28-34), and yet the Church, while it has 
 changed its belief wholly on that subject, has not changed its faith in 
 the belief of the miracles of the Bible, and it is certain that infidelity 
 would make no impression on the Church by arguing from the one to 
 the other. 
 
 The reasons of this are now plain. The sphere of witchcraft, nec- 
 romancy, sorcery, and divination, and the sphere of miracles, is wide- 
 ly different. All, indeed, pertain to the supernatural, but they do not 
 so pertain to it that the one affects the other. The one—witchcraft, 
 necromancy, divination, sorcery—is an alliance with inferior spirits ; 
 
APPENDIX. 431 
 
 not with God. It is for purposes of mischief; never for good. The 
 power which it summons, and with which it combines, is an evil—a 
 malignant power. ‘The facts in the case are susceptible of explana- 
 tion from natural causes. The effects on a community can be traced 
 to a popular illusion. The whole operation—the agents employed, the 
 manner in which they are supposed to effect their marvels, and the 
 effects themselves, are all beneath the dignity of philosophy, beneath 
 religion, beneath God, and beneath the rules of sober reasoning. In 
 reference to the great change produced in the world in our age on the 
 subject of witchcraft, there is undoubtedly much force in the following 
 remarks of Lecky, and those remarks may furnish one cause to show 
 why faith in the miracles of the Bible has not been extensively affect- 
 ed by this change of belief. He says, ‘‘ If we ask why it is that the 
 world has rejected what was once so universally and so intensely be- 
 lieved—why a narrative of an old woman who had been seen riding on 
 a broomstick, or who was proved to have transformed herself into a 
 wolf, and to have devoured the flocks of her neighbors, is deemed so 
 entirely incredible, most persons would probably be unable to give a 
 very definite answer to the question. It is not because we have ex- 
 amined the evidence and found it insufficient, for the disbelief always 
 precedes, when it does not prevent, examination. It is rather because 
 the idea of absurdity is so strongly attached to such narratives that it 
 is difficult even to consider them with gravity” (vol. i., p. 84). It will 
 instantly occur to the mind that no such process of thought can be ap- 
 plied to the healing of the sick, to the restoration of the blind to sight, 
 or to the raising of the dead. 
 
 I infer, therefore, that the process of thought by which the world 
 has been delivered from faith in witchcraft, necromancy, sorcery, and 
 divination, is not applicable to the miracles of the New Testament, 
 and that the miracles of the Bible can not be disposed of in the way 
 in which the belief in witchcraft, necromancy, and sorcery has been. 
 
 (3.) The third point in the argument relates to the inquiry whether 
 the miracles of the Bible can be disposed of in the manner in which 
 the miracles alleged to have been wrought in the early Christian 
 Church after the time of the apostles, and at subsequent periods, can 
 be. This inquiry would also embrace the Roman Catholic miracles 
 which are claimed to be wrought in our own times as proofs of the di- 
 vine origin of the Roman Catholic faith, and in defense of the pene 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 The inquiry is, whether what would be a proper explanation of the 
 one would also apply to the other; whether, on the supposition that 
 these claims in regard to the miracles of the Church subsequent to the 
 times of the apostles are false, the same process of reasoning would 
 
432 APPENDIX. 
 
 show that the miracles of the Bible are false? In other words, the in- 
 quiry is, whether, on the supposition that the world will settle down 
 into a universal skepticism in regard to the miracles alleged to have 
 been wrought since the time of the apostles, and especially those 
 claimed to have been wrought in the Roman Catholic Church, as it 
 probably will, the process of thought by which that conclusion will be 
 reached will carry with it necessarily a universal skepticism in regard 
 to the miracles of the Bible? It is clear that if the same explanation 
 can be given to the one as to the other, the conclusion will be inevita- 
 ble that they are equally false ; if there is no stronger testimony in the 
 one case than in the other, on the supposition that the world has been 
 under a delusion in reference to the facts alleged, then the same con- 
 clusion in regard to both classes of miracles is inevitable. It is a 
 great question, therefore, whether the present tendency of the world to 
 Rationalism, as affecting this point, as it undoubtedly exists in the sci- 
 entific world, in the Protestant churches, and even, as we have seen, 
 in the Roman Catholic communion, is in fact a tendency toward Ra- 
 tionalism or skepticism on the whole subject of miracles, and will lead 
 to the denial of miracles altogether. 
 
 It is not necessary to adyert farther to the great change which has 
 occurred in the world in reference to the miracles which were alleged 
 to have been wrought in the times subsequent to the apostles. Up to 
 a recent period, the inquiry in ecclesiastical history has been, not 
 whether such miraculous powers existed in the Church, but at what 
 exact point that power ceased. ‘The general impression among Prot- 
 estants has been, that that power ceased when miracles were no longer 
 necessary for the defense and the diffusion of Christianity’ The pre- 
 vailing opinion on the subject has been undoubtedly expressed by Arch- 
 bishop Tillotson: ‘‘ That on the first planting of the Christian religion 
 in the world, God was pleased to accompany it with a miraculous pow- 
 er; but after it was planted that power ceased, and God left it to be 
 maintained by ordinary ways.”* 
 
 It would not conduce to any proper view of the point before us to 
 state farther the changes which have occurred in the opinions of men 
 on the subject ; to inquire at what time the power of working miracles 
 in the Church, if it ever existed, ceased; or to consider the question 
 whether such miraculous powers existed or not. The sole inquiry is, 
 whether the miracles of the Bible can be disposed of in the same way 
 as the alleged miracles in the Church subsequent to the time of the 
 apostles ; whether an absolute skepticism in regard to the latter of ne- 
 cessity involves an absolute skepticism in regard to the former ; 
 whether the two stand or fall together ? 
 
 * Sermons, vol, iii., p. 488, ed. 1735. 
 
APPENDIX. 433 
 
 On this inquiry I submit the following remarks : 
 
 First. If miracles were actually wrought in the primitive Church 
 subsequent. to the time of the apostles, and continue to be wrought 
 still in the Roman Catholic Church, this would not prove that the 
 miracles of the Bible were false. That one thing has been done does 
 not prove that another has not been. Moreover, in such a case and 
 on such an admission, the possibility of miracles would be established, 
 and the presumption, therefore, would be that they may have occurred 
 as recorded in the Bible. _ Indeed, if they have occurred in such num- 
 bers as it has been claimed that they have done in the Church, then, 
 so far from its being true, as Mr. Hume alleges, that ‘‘a uniform ex- 
 perience has established the stability of the laws of nature,” the very 
 reverse of this has been established. The admission of the fact of 
 such miracles would destroy the whole argument of Mr. Hume. 
 
 Second. If the miracles referred to were not wrought in the primi- 
 tive Church, and if they are not wrought in the Roman Catholic 
 Church, that does not prove that the miracles of the Bible are false. 
 Obviously it may be possible to account for the prevalence of a belief 
 in false miracles, and for well-executed impostures in one case, by ex- 
 planations which would not be applicable to the other. Illusions in 
 one instance do not prove that illusions extend to every thing ; impos- 
 ture in one case does not prove that it exists in all cases; that there 
 are deceivers at one time and in one place does not prove that they 
 exist at all times and in all places; the fact that there is counterfeit 
 coin does not prove that there is no genuine coin; that’ there are false 
 religions in the world does not prove that there is no religion that is 
 genuine. It is clear that the pretended miracles in the primitive 
 Church, and in the Roman Catholic communion, should be examined 
 on their own merits, and be embraced or rejected as the evidence in 
 the case shall demand. If*there is reason to reject them, that fact 
 does not prove that there may not be reasons why the account of oth- 
 er miracles should be embraced as true. No amount of testimony 
 in regard to the alleged fact that the dead were raised subsequent to 
 the time of the apostles, whether for or against such claims, could 
 demonstrate that Lazarus was not raised from the dead; nor should 
 Rationalism and skepticism make a hasty stride from one to the 
 other. 
 
 Third. It is possible to account for all that is said to have occurred 
 in the primitive Church after the time of the apostles, and in the 
 Roman Catholic Church, without supposing that there were real mira- 
 cles wrought. It might be that tricks and jugglery were practiced ; 
 it might be that there was collusion and concert in performing the al- 
 leged miracle ; it might be that the witnesses did not say that they saw 
 
 T 
 
434 APPENDIX. 
 
 the miracles, but that they were reported to have occurred; it might 
 be that no record was made at the time, but that the belief grew up in 
 a subsequent age; it might be that the alleged miracles were manifestly 
 wrought to sustain a particular form of religion, or a party in the 
 Church, or the claims of a priesthood to a divine appointment, or the 
 truth of a particular doctrine, or to honor a particular saint ; it might 
 be that there were rival churches, and that the miracles were mani- 
 festly wrought to sustain the one against the other; it might be that 
 there was a susceptibility in the public mind, or in the prevalent be- 
 lief of the age, which received such accounts without calling them in 
 question ; it might be that the belief in the miracles was on the same 
 ground as the belief in prevalent superstitions—as of ghostsy appari- — 
 tions, witchcraft, table-turning, and spirit-rapping; it might be that 
 the alleged witnesses were not credible witnesses, and that they were 
 never subjected to any test or trial which would show that. they were 
 sincere witnesses for truth, and were not impostors. Without affirm- 
 ing now that these things were so, it is affirmed that it is conceivable 
 that they might be so; and the world is undoubtedly coming to that 
 belief in regard to all the pretended miracles in the Roman Catholic 
 Church ; all the marvels of the Middle Ages; and to no small part, at 
 least, of the alleged miracles of the primitive Church after the time of 
 the apostles. 
 
 Fourth. The philosophical mode of accounting for the alleged mira- 
 cles of the primitive Church after the time of the apostles will not ex- 
 plain the facts in regard to the miracles of the New Testament. This 
 remark, for the purpose of the argument, and without in any way 
 affecting injuriously the general conclusion, may be confined to the 
 alleged miracles in the period immediately succeeding the apostles—. 
 for it is there that the strength of the argument must lie. If those 
 miracles are disposed of there can be no difficulty in regard to those 
 that follow. 
 
 The following facts, then, have been established so as to admit of 
 little or no doubt in regard to those miracles : 
 
 (a) That the ‘‘ apostolic fathers’—as they are commonly called— 
 those who lived in the time of the apostles, and who had, some of .« 
 them at least, conversed with the apostles, advance no claim to any 
 such miraculous powers, and make no affirmation that such miracles 
 were wrought by any in their own age who were not apostles. ‘Those: 
 ‘* fathers” embrace Barnabas, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, and Her- 
 mas, some of whom survived for half a century after the death of the 
 last of the apostles.* ‘‘ Here, then,” says Middleton (p. 9), ‘‘ we have 
 
 * For the proof of what is affirmed here and in the remainder of this argu- 
 ment about the alleged miracles in the Church, I refer to the work of Middle- 
 
APPENDIX. 435 
 
 an interval of about half a century, the earliest and purest of all Chris- 
 tian antiquity after the days of the apostles, in which we find not the 
 least reference to any standing power of working miracles, as existed 
 openly in the Church, for the conviction of unbelievers; but, on the 
 contrary, the strongest reason to presume that the extraordinary gifts 
 of the apostolic age were by this time actually withdrawn.” 
 
 (6) It is also true that none of the early ‘‘ fathers” of the Church, 
 succeeding this time, who declare that the power of working miracles 
 existed in the Church, ‘‘ have any where affirmed that either they 
 themselves, or the apostolic fathers before them, were endowed with 
 any power of working miracles” (Middleton, p. 21). They affirm, in- 
 deed, that ‘‘ such powers were actually subsisting in their days, and 
 were openly exerted in the Church; that they had often seen the 
 wonderful effects of them; and that every body else might see the 
 same, whenever they pleased,” but they do not affirm that they had the 
 power, or that they had seen the miracles, nor do they specify the 
 names, the dates, or the persons by whom, or on whom, the miracles 
 were performed. Origen, speaking of the miracle of casting out 
 devils, says that ‘‘it was performed by laymen.” Mr. Whiston re- 
 marks on this subject that ‘‘ this gift was wholly appropriated by the 
 Savior to the meaner sorts of Christians, with an exclusion even of the 
 clergy, so that after the days of the apostles none of the sacred order 
 ever pretended to it.”* 
 
 Something, perhaps, may be learned respecting the character of 
 those who pretended to work miracles from the uniform statements of 
 the enemies of Christianity. It is certain that they were always re- 
 garded as pretenders and impostors, and were always charged with the 
 practice of fraud.. Thus Lucian says that ‘‘ whenever any crafty 
 juggler, expert in his trade, and who knew how to make a right use 
 of things, went over to the Christians, he was sure to grow rich imme- 
 diately by making a prey of their simplicity.” In like manner Celsus 
 represents all the Christian wonder-workers as mere vagabonds and 
 common cheats, ‘‘ who rambled about to play tricks at fairs and mark- 
 ets; not in the-circles of tlfe wiser and better sort, for among such 
 they never ventured to appear, but wherever they observed a set of 
 raw young fellows, slaves, or fools, there they took care to intrude 
 themselves and to display their arts.”{ Caeecilius calls them ‘‘a lurk- 
 ing nation; shunning the light ; mute in public; prating in corners.Ӥ 
 
 In view of all the statements among the ancients respecting those 
 ton: A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers which are supposed to have 
 subsisted in the Christian Church from the Earliest Ages, by Conyers Middle- 
 ton, D.D., ed. London, 1749. * Account of the Demoniacs, p. 52. 
 
 t De Mort. Pereg., t. ii., p. 568. t Orig. Con. Cels., 1. 6, p. 284. 
 § Minne. Fel., p. 7. Middleton, p. 22, 23. 
 
436 APPENDIX. 
 
 who were supposed to work miracles, Middleton makes the following 
 remarks: ‘‘The celebrated gifts of those ages were generally engrossed 
 and exercised by private Christians, who used to travel about from city 
 to city to assist the ordinary pastors of the Church and preachers of 
 the Gospel in the conversion of the pagans, by the extraordinary gifts 
 with which they were supposed to be endowed by the Spirit of God, 
 and the miraculous works which they pretended to perform” (p. 24). 
 In accordance with this view, it is stated that the pretended power 
 of working miracles was committed, not to those who were intrusted 
 with the government of the Church—not to bishops, martyrs, and the 
 chief defenders of the Christian cause, but to boys; to women; to 
 private and obscure laymen; to even those of abandoned moral char- 
 acter : 
 Nuvi dé kai 60 avakiwy évepyetv 6 Oeds elwle. 
 Chrysostom, t. iii., p. 66. 
 
 Ut intelligamus, quedam miracula etiam sceleratores homines facere, qua- 
 lia sancti facere non possunt. Augus. Oper., t. i, p. 71. 
 
 (c) The character of many of the Christian fathers for credulity 
 and for the want of veracity is such as to render their testimony on 
 this point of great doubt and of little value. They undoubtedly 
 adopted the principle that the Christian religion was true; that it was 
 indispensable for the salvation of men; and that a// means were to be 
 employed to propagate it, to convince men of its truth, and to induce 
 them to turn from idolatry to the service of the true God. If the re- 
 sult was reached, that result was, in their apprehension, of much more 
 importance than the means of reaching it. In accordance with this, 
 it is undoubtedly true that false histories were early forged; false and 
 weak interpretations were given to the Scriptures; false narratives of 
 events were given to the world—until the world became full of the 
 legends of the saints and martyrs. If it be true that, as historians of 
 ordinary facts and ordinary events, they report such facts accurately, 
 it is also true that there were numberless narratives in those early 
 ages which were based wholly on fiction, and true also that these were 
 employed in the propagation of religion. Middleton (p. 36-71) has 
 placed these facts beyond question, and these facts would go far to ex- 
 plain the accounts of the early miracles in the Christian Church. 
 
 (d) It is a very material fact in regard to these pretended miracles, 
 alike in the early Christian Church, in the Middle Ages, and in the’ 
 modern Roman Catholic Church, that the testimony is not usually 
 given by contemporaries, or those who lived at the time—so far as 
 names and dates are concerned, but by writers of a later age. ‘This is 
 true alike of the pretended miracles of the early Christian Church, of 
 the miracles of the heathen as referred to by the enemies of Christian- 
 
- APPENDIX, 437 
 
 ity, of most of the miracles attributed to the sacred relics of the saints, 
 and of most of the miracles of the ‘‘ saints” who haye been ‘‘ canon- 
 ized” in the Roman Catholic Church. Thus miracles are attributed 
 to Pythagoras, not by his contemporaries, but by Porphyry and Iam- 
 blichus, who wrote his life three hundred years after his death; the 
 prodigies in the History of Rome are recorded, not by persons who 
 lived at the time, but by Livy, who lived many centuries afterward ; 
 the miracles ascribed to Apollonius of Tyana, of which so much has 
 been made by the enemies of Christianity, were not recorded by any 
 one living at the time, but the belief in them rests solely on the single 
 assertion of his biographer, Philostratus, who lived a hundred years 
 after the death of Apollonius; the accounts of the miracles of Greg- 
 ory, bishop of Neocesarea, called Thaumaturgus from the number and 
 ‘character of the miracles which he wrought, is found only in the writ- 
 ings of Gregory of Nyssen, who lived a hundred and thirty years after 
 him; and a great part of the legendary miracles of the Popish 
 ‘*saints” depend for their credibility on the certificates presented at 
 their ‘‘ canonization,” a ceremony which seldom takes place till a cen- 
 tury after their deaths. 
 
 A single case will illustrate this point, and show its real force in the 
 argument. It is that of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the order of 
 the Jesuits. His life, written by a companion of his, was published 
 about fifteen years after his death. In that life, the author, so far 
 from ascribing any miracles to Ignatius, carefully states the reasons 
 why he was not invested with any such power. That life was repub- 
 lished fifteen years afterward, with the addition of many circumstan- 
 ces, which were the fruit, the author says, of farther inquiry and of 
 diligent examination, but still with a total silence about miracles. 
 When Ignatius had been dead nearly sixty years, the Jesuits, conceiv- 
 ing a wish to haye the founder of their order placed in the Roman cal- 
 endar, began, for the first time, to attribute to him.the power of work- 
 ing miracles, and specified a large number which could not then be 
 distinctly disproved, and which there was, in those who governed the 
 Church, a strong disposition to admit on the slenderest proofs.* 
 
 It is clear that these circumstances constitute a broad line of dis- 
 tinction between these alleged miracles and the miracles of the New 
 Testament, and that, so far as these cases go, the explanation of the 
 one would in no manner constitute an explanation of the other. 
 
 (e) It is material, also, to remark, that a large part of the miracles 
 alleged to have been wrought in the early Church, and nearly all of 
 those wrought in the Roman Catholic Church, were wrought, not by 
 
 * The authority for these statements is Paley—Evidences of Christianity, 
 Works, ed. 1824, vol. i., p. 182, 183. 
 
438 APPENDIX. 
 
 the persons themselves while living, but by their redics, and many of 
 them hundreds of years after the death of the ‘‘ saints” themselves. 
 The Ecclesiastical History of the Middle Ages and of the Romish 
 Church is full of such wonders, and our own age has been edified 
 with the accounts of numberless such miracles as were wrought by the 
 ** Holy Coat” at Treves. Even Augustine, the ablest and most clear- 
 headed of the fathers, and a man of undoubted piety, solemnly asserts 
 that in his own diocese at Hippo, in the space of two years, no less 
 than seventy miracles had been wrought by the body of St. Stephen, 
 and that in the neighboring province of Calama, where the relic had 
 previously been, the number was incomparably greater. He gives a 
 catalogue of what he deems undoubted miracles, which he says he had 
 selected from a multitude so great that volumes would be required to 
 relate them all. In that catalogue we find no less than five cases of ” 
 restoration of life to the dead (De Civit. Dei, lib. xxii., ec. 8). In his 
 Confessions (b..ix., vili., 16) he relates the case of miracles wrought by 
 the dead bodies of Gervasius and Protasius, which were discovered by 
 Ambrose of Milan, and which were removed to the Ambrosian Basilica, 
 particularly the restoring of sight to a blind man who was allowed to 
 touch the bier with a handkerchief. Of this miracle, and of numerous 
 others of a similar kind, he says, ‘‘ Of which so great glory of the mar- 
 tyrs I also was a witness. I was there—was at Milan; I knew the 
 miracles wrought, God bearing witness to ‘the precious death of his 
 saints,’ so that through those miracles that ‘death was precious’ now 
 not ‘in the sight of the Lord’ only, but in the sight of men” (De Civit. 
 Dei, lib. xxii., c. 8,32). Itis clear that whatever explanation is given 
 of these miracles, the explanation would not be applicable to the mira- 
 cles of the New Testament. 
 
 (f) It is farther to be remarked that the testimony on these sub- 
 jects among the fathers, and in subsequent times, involved no sacri- 
 fices ; led to no persecutions ; was not attended with the loss of place 
 or property, or with peril of life. All that is required in such cases is. 
 what Dr. Paley calls ‘‘an otiose assent.”” ‘They are employed for the 
 maintenance of doctrines already embraced ; or in defense of a priest- 
 hood already established ; or for the credit of an ‘‘ order” of religion- 
 ists, like the Jesuits; or in honor of a particular monastery; or to 
 commemorate some particular virtues of a saint, or to attract men to 
 his shrine. Such things require no sacrifices. They demand no 
 abandonment of country, of friends, or of home. They lead to no 
 perils by sea or land. They involve no dangers of persecution. They 
 are not believed and defended with the apprehension of fearful tor- 
 tures; of being thrown to wild beasts; of being scourged or stoned; 
 of being burned at the stake, or put to death on a cross. They belong 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 439 
 
 to the same class of marvels, in this respect, as the belief in appari- 
 tions, ghosts, table-turning, spirit-rapping. Whether men wow/d suffer 
 persecution on their account might be a fair question; it is certain 
 that they do not. ; 
 
 But it is hardly necessary to advert to the fact that all this is differ- 
 ent from the miracles of the New Testament, and the treatment of the 
 apostles consequent on their faith in those miracles. Those miracles, 
 if real, decided the most important questions conceivable in regard to 
 the destiny of mankind. ‘The belief in them led to an entire change 
 in the religion of the world. They were not wrought to establish any 
 existing system of religion, but they led to the overthrow of all the sys- 
 tems of religion that did exist, in all lands, involving all that there was 
 of property, and position, and influence, and traditionary sacredness in 
 those religions; all that there was that was mighty, and sacred, and 
 venerable in a priesthood; and all that was held sacred in the laws. 
 The belief in those miracles involved the necessity of parting with 
 friends ; of encountering the perils of land and ocean ; of meeting with 
 opposition, contempt, persecution, and death in its most terrific forms ; 
 of bidding adieu to all that was attracfive in this life, and of enduring 
 all that could be made fearful to human nature while living, and all in 
 death that could be made terrible. 
 
 I infer, therefore, that the explanation which must be given of the 
 miracles of the early Church after the time of the apostles, of the 
 miracles of the Middle Ages, and of the miracles of the Roman Catho- 
 lic Church, is not a philosophical explanation of the miracles of the 
 Bible. 
 
 (4.) The fourth point in the argument relates to the inquiry whether 
 thé miracles of the Bible can be disposed of in the same way as the 
 miracles alleged to have been wrought among the heathen; or, more 
 generally, the miracles which are referred to by those who reject the 
 claims of the Bible. These may, of course, embrace a part of those 
 which have already been referred to, but they may properly, so far as 
 they are appealed to by the rejectors of the Bible, be again noticed 
 with reference to their direct bearing on the argument. 
 
 It would have been wiser undoubtedly for the rejectors of the mira- 
 cles of the Bible to base the argument for their rejection on general 
 principles and on abstract reasoning, and not to peril their argument 
 by bringing other miracles into comparison with those of the Bible. 
 Mr. Hume’s celebrated Essay on Miracles would have been stronger 
 by far if he had omitted all reference to other miracles in comparison 
 with those in the Bible. It is, therefore, an advantage in the argu- 
 ment for the miracles of the Bible that an attempt has been made to 
 bring others into comparison with them. If, now, an explanation can 
 
440 APPENDIX. 
 
 be given of those alleged miracles which can not be applied to those in 
 the Bible, or which will not satisfactorily account for them, the argu- 
 ment for the reality of those miracles will remain in all its proper 
 force. 
 
 In such an argument on the part of those who reject the miracles of 
 the Bible, they who make the appeal have, as Dr. Paley has remarked, 
 an undoubted right to select their own examples. We may presume 
 that they would select the strongest instances which the world has 
 furnished to bring into comparison with the miracles of the Bible, and 
 all the proprieties of the case will be complied with if, in the argu- 
 ment, the attention is confined to those examples to which they have 
 referred. ‘The friends of religion can not be supposed to be bound to 
 furnish, if they could, stronger instances than those which have been 
 actually selected. 
 
 In particular, it may be presumed that Mr. Hume would select those 
 which, for his purpose, could be best brought into comparison with the 
 Scripture miracles. Of the rejectors of revelation, few, if any, have 
 been more acute and learned than he; none probably have had a larger 
 acquaintance with history, or could make a better selection of the mi- 
 raculous events on which the argument might be made to rest. 
 
 From the wide range of pretended miracles in the world; from the 
 2lmost innumerable cases of such pretensions; from those marvels 
 which have been regarded as miracles in the heathen world, in the 
 early Christian Church after the time of the apostles, in the Middle 
 Ages, and in the Roman Catholic Church in more modern times, he 
 has selected three on which he seems willing that the argument shall 
 rest. They are the following : 
 
 I. The cure of a blind and a lame man of Alexandria, by the Em- 
 peror Vespasian, as related by Tacitus ; 
 
 II. The restoration of the limb of an attendant in a Spanish church, 
 as told by Cardinal de Retz; and, 
 
 III. The cures said to have been performed at the tomb of the Abbé 
 Paris in the early part of the last century. 
 
 The circumstances in these cases, and the argument, can be best 
 expressed in his own words: ‘‘ One of the best attested miracles in all 
 profane history is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured 
 a blind man in Alexandria-by means of his spittle, and a lame man by 
 the mere touch of his foot; in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis, 
 who had enjoined them to have recourse to the emperor for these mi- 
 raculous cures. The story may be seen in that fine historian, where 
 every circumstance seems to add weight to the testimony, and might 
 be displayed at large with all the force of argument and eloquence, if 
 any one were now concerned to enforce the evidence of that exploded 
 
APPENDIX. 44] 
 
 and idolatrous superstition. The gravity, solidity, age, and probity of 
 so great an emperor, who, through the whole course of his life, con- 
 versed in a familiar manner with his friends and courtiers, and never 
 affected those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander 
 and Demetrius; the historian a contemporary writer, noted for can- 
 dor and veracity, and, withal, the greatest and most penetrating gen- 
 1us, perhaps, of all antiquity, and so free from any tendency to cre- 
 dulity that he even lies under the contrary imputation of atheism and 
 profaneness ; the persons from whose authority he related the miracle, 
 of established character for judgment and veracity, as we may well 
 presume — eye-witnesses of the fact, and confirming their testimony 
 after the Flavian family was despoiled of the empire, and could no 
 longer give any reward as the price of a lie—utrumque, qui interfuere, 
 nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum mendacio pretium — to 
 which if we add the public nature of the facts as related, it will appear 
 that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and so 
 palpable a falsehood. 
 
 ‘‘There is also a memorable story related by Cardinal de Retz 
 which may well deserve our consideration. When that intriguing 
 politician fled into Spain to avoid the persecution of his enemies, he 
 passed through Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, where he was shown 
 in the cathedral a man who had served seven years as a door-keeper, 
 and was well known to every body in town that had ever paid his de- 
 votions at that Church. He had,been seen for so long a time want- 
 ing a leg, but recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy oil upon the 
 stump; and the cardinal assures us that he saw him with two legs. 
 This miracle was vouched by all the canons of the Church; and the 
 whole company in town were appealed to for a confirmation of the 
 fact, whom the cardinal found, by their zealous devotion, to be thor- 
 ough believers of the miracle. Here the relater was also contemporary 
 to the supposed prodigy, of an incredulous and libertine character, as- 
 well as of great genius; the miracle of so singular a nature as could 
 scarcely admit of a counterfeit, and the witnesses very numerous, and 
 all of them in a manner spectators of the fact, to which they gave their 
 testimony. And what adds mightily to the force of the evidence, and 
 may double our surprise on this occasion, is that the cardinal himself, 
 who relates the story, seems not to give any credit to it, and conse- 
 quently can not be suspected of any concurrence in the holy fraud, 
 He considered justly that it was not requisite, in order to reject a fact 
 of this nature, to be able accurately to disprove the testimony and to 
 trace its falsehood through all the circumstances of knayery and cre- 
 dulity which produced it. He knew that, as this was commonly alto- 
 gether impossible at any small distance of time and place, so was it 
 
 ‘2 
 
442 APPENDIX. 
 
 extremely difficult, even where one was immediately present, by reason 
 of the bigotry, ignorance, cunning, and roguery of a great part of man- 
 kind. He therefore concluded, like a just reasoner, that such an eyi- 
 dence carried falsehood upon the very face of it, and that a miracle 
 supported by any human testimony was more properly a subject of 
 derision than of argument. 
 
 ‘‘ There surely was never a greater number of miracles ascribed to 
 one person than those which were lately said to have been wrought 
 in France upon the tomb of Abbé Paris, the famous Jansenist, with 
 whose sanctity the people were so long deluded. ‘The curing of the 
 sick, giving hearing to the deaf, and sight to the blind, were every 
 where talked of as usual effects of that holy sepulchre. But, what is 
 more extraordinary, many of the miracles were immediately proved 
 upon the spot, before judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by wit- 
 nesses of credit and distinction, in a learned age, and on the most em- 
 inent theatre that is now in the-world. Nor is this all; a relation of 
 them was published and dispersed every where; nor were the Jesuits, 
 though a learned. body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determ- 
 ined enemies to those opinions in whose favor the miracles were said 
 to have been wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them. 
 Where shall we find such a number of circumstances agreeing to the 
 corroboration of one fact? And what have we to oppose to such a 
 cloud of witnesses but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature 
 of the events which they relate? And this surely, in the eyes of all 
 reasonable people, will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation.”* 
 
 Of the first of these alleged miracles, the account by Tacitus is as 
 follows : 
 
 ‘*(Qne of the common people of Alexandria, known to be diseased in 
 his eyes, by the admonition of the god Serapis, whom that superstitious 
 nation worship above all other gods, prostrated himself before the em- 
 peror, earnestly imploring from him a remedy for his blindness, and 
 entreating that he would deign to anoint with his spittle his cheeks 
 and the balls of his eyes. Another, diseased in his hand, requested, by 
 the admonition of the same god, that he might be toucued by the foot 
 of the emperor. Vespasian at first derided and despised their appli- 
 cation ; afterward, when they continued to urge their petitions, he 
 sometimes appeared to dread the imputation of vanity ; at other times, 
 by the earnest supplication of the patients, and the persuasion of his 
 flatterers, to be induced to hope for success. At length he command- 
 ed an inquiry to be made by the physicians whether such a blindness 
 and debility were vincible by human aid. ‘The report of the physi- 
 cians contained various points ; that in the one the power of vision was 
 
 * Essays, vol. ii., p. 115-118. : 
 
APPENDIX. 443 
 
 not destroyed, but would return if the obstacles were removed; that 
 in the other, the diseased joints might be restored if a healing power 
 were applied ; that it was, perhaps, agreeable to the gods to do this; 
 that the emperor was elected by divine assistance; lastly, that the 
 credit of the success would be the emperor’s, the ridicule of the disap- 
 pointment would fall upon the patients. Vespasian, believing that 
 every thing was in the power of his fortune, and that nothing was any 
 longer incredible, while the multitude which stood by eagerly expect- 
 ed the event, with a countenance expressive of joy, executed what he 
 was desired to do. Immediately the hand was restored to its use, and 
 light returned to the blind man. They who were present relate both 
 these cures, even at this time, when there is nothing to be gained by 
 lying.’’* 
 
 What, now, is the real force of the argument from this alleged mira- 
 cle? What were the facts in the case? Was it believed by Mr. Hume ? 
 Can it properly be brought into comparison with the miracles of the 
 New Testament ? 
 
 It is plain that if the miracles in the case of Vespasian were actually 
 wrought, this would not prove that the Savior did not restore Barti-_ 
 meus to sight, or heal the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. 
 There would be no incompatibility between the miracles, for there is 
 no necessary conflict. Suppose that in one case a miracle was wrought 
 as a work of benevolence, and in another for the establishment of the 
 truth of a divine mission, there evidently would be no such conflict be- 
 twéen the two as to prove that either was false. 
 
 In reference to these alleged miracles of Vespasian, it is to be re- 
 marked (a) that the account by Tacitus was given twenty-seven years 
 after they were said to have occurred; (() that he recorded in Rome 
 what was said to have occurred in Alexandria; (c) that he did not 
 profess to haye seen the miracles himself, but wrote from report; (a) 
 that he manifestly did not believe in the reality cf the miracles; (e) 
 that the whole affair is liable to a strong suspicion that it was the 
 work of illusion and deception. In other words, all that there was in 
 the case can be explained on the supposition that there was collusion 
 between the patients, the physician, and the emperor. ‘This explana- 
 tion is admissible for these reasons: (1.) It was not uncommon, then, 
 to believe that such miracles could be wrought, just as in later times 
 in England it was believed that scrofula, or the ‘‘ king’s evil,” could be 
 cured by the touch of the king.t (2.) It would be for the interest and 
 
 * Tacit., Hist., lib. iv. 
 
 it Charles the ‘Second, in the course of his reign, ‘‘ touched” near a Shenae 
 thousand persons. In 1682 he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred 
 times. James the Second, in one of his progresses, touched eight persons in 
 
444 APPENDIX. 
 
 credit of the emperor that such a belief should be entertained in regard 
 to him. (3.) The miracles were achieved in the midst of the emper- 
 or’s flatterers and followers; in a city and among a:people deyoted to 
 his interest, and to the worship of the god Serapis ; and where it would 
 have been treason and blasphemy to have contradicted the fame of the. 
 cure, or to have questioned it. (4.) It is to be observed, also, that the 
 report of the physicians is just such a report as would be made in a 
 case in which no external marks of the disease existed, and which, 
 consequently, was capable of being easily counterfeited, to wit, that in 
 the one case the organs of vision were not destroyed, and that the 
 weakness of the second was in the joints. (5.) There is little force in 
 the remark of Tacitus that they who were present continued eyen then 
 to ‘‘relate both these cures, when there was nothing to be gained by 
 lying.” The particular point of importance is the state of mind of the 
 witnesses, and the circumstances at the time, and not whether the 
 story would be likely to be repeated. It is also of importance to re- 
 mark, that if there was nothing ‘‘ to be gained by lying,” it is a ques- 
 tion of much more moment whether there was any thing to be (ost, or 
 any thing to be suffered by continuing to repeat the story. Would the 
 witnesses have done it if it would have involved them in trouble and 
 losses ; if it had subjected them to persecution ; if it had exposed them 
 to death in most horrid forms? (6.) To make this case parallel, 
 therefore, with the miracles of the New Testament, all, or nearly all 
 of these circumstances must be reversed. If these marvelous cures 
 had been performed in the presence of cayilers and enemies ; if those 
 who were present were incredulous, and had no previous disposition to 
 believe such a fact; if every circumstance was watched with a jealous 
 eye; if nothing was to be gained by it at the time or afterward ; if the 
 case was removed as far as possible from all appearance or possibility 
 of collusion ; if they who professed to be witnesses of the transaction, 
 
 the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The reality of these cures—the efficacy 
 of this touch—was attested by much stronger evidence than that adduced by 
 Mr. Hume for the miracles of Vespasian ; than that referred to by the Cardi- 
 nal de Retz; and than those performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris. 
 ‘‘Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of 
 their authority to this mummery, and medical men of high note believed, or 
 affected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must sup- 
 pose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high 
 repute for skill; and more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles 
 the Second has left us a solemn profession of faith in the king’s miraculous 
 power.” William of Orange committed an almost unpardonable offense by 
 ‘sneering’ at the practice, and refusing to lend his sanction toit. ‘‘Itisa silly 
 superstition,” said he, when, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a 
 crowd of the sick. ‘‘Give the poor creatures some money, and send them 
 away.”—Macaulay, History of England, vol. iii., p. 432-435, 
 
APPENDIX. 445 
 
 and who gave circulation to the report on the strength of what they 
 saw, gave up their former cherished hopes, changed their whole course 
 of life, abandoned all their plans, and all the opinions in which they 
 had been trained, and sacrificed their ease and their reputation ; if they 
 went forth on the ground of this to meet every form of trial, and bore 
 patiently the most cruel tortures, and met death itself rather than 
 change their testimony on the subject ; and if the belief of such mira- 
 cles actually changed the religions, the customs, and laws of the world, 
 producing changes that could be traced through eighteen hundred 
 years, making the world different from what it was, and modifying its 
 customs and laws, then, and only then, would it be proper to allege 
 that the miracles of Vespasian were an offset against the miracles of 
 the New Testament.* 
 
 The second case referred to by Mr. Hume is the restoration of the 
 limb of an attendant in a Spanish church, as told by Cardinal de Retz. 
 
 It is evident from the narrative, as given by Mr. Hume, that the 
 cardinal who relates this story did not himself believe it; and it is 
 manifestly adduced by him because the cardinal did not believe it, and 
 with a design to leave the impression that a// miracles should be treat- 
 ed with the same degree of incredulity. Undoubtedly there have been 
 thousands of pretended miracles in the Roman Catholic Church, as 
 well as elsewhere, that should be treated in this manner, and that are 
 precisely parallel with this. The reasoning, however, so far as there 
 is any reasoning in the case, would not be far from that where, if a 
 man saw one counterfeit note, he should infer that all notes’ were 
 counterfeit, or where, if he met with one case of imposture in a com- 
 munity, he should infer that all the transactions in society were im- 
 posture and delusion. In fact, nothing can be more easy than to ac- 
 count for all that is here said by Cardinal de Retz. The substitution 
 of an artificial leg would account for all that he says. What he says 
 is, that the man, ‘‘ who had served seven years as a door-keeper, and 
 was well known to every body in town, had been seen for so long a 
 time wanting a leg,” but that ‘‘ he saw him with two legs.” He in- 
 deed affirms that he had ‘‘ recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy 
 oil upon the stump,” and that ‘‘ this was vouched by all the canons of 
 the church ;” but the only fact to which he bears testimony is, that 
 ‘*he saw him with two legs.” There was, manifestly, no examina- 
 tion; there was no comparison of the two; there is even no statement 
 that he was seen walking; and every thing that the cardinal saw, and 
 which is, therefore, the subject of his testimony, could be explained on 
 the supposition that an artificial leg had been made to supply the place 
 of the one that had been lost—a thing certainly not unusual, and not 
 
 * Compare Paley’s Evidences of Christianity, Works, vol. i., p. 198-201. 
 
446 APPENDIX. 
 
 involving a miracle. It is to be remembered, also, as Dr. Paley has 
 remarked, that ‘‘ the ecclesiastics of the place would, it is probable, 
 favor the story, inasmuch as it advanced the honor of their image and 
 the church. And if they patronized it, no other person at Saragossa, 
 in the middle of the last century, would care to dispute it. The story 
 likewise coincided not less with the wishes and preconceptions of the 
 people than with the interests of their ecclesiastical rulers, so that 
 there was prejudice backed by authority, and both operating on ex- 
 treme ignorance, to account for the success of the imposture.”* 
 
 The only thing, in fact, remarkable about this case is, that a man of 
 Mr. Hume’s acuteness in argument should ever have referred to such 
 a case as an offset against the miracles of the New Testament—the 
 healing of the blind, the deaf, and the lame by the Savior ; the stilling 
 of the tempest on the Sea of Tiberias by his command; and the rais- 
 ing of Lazarus from the grave, and that he should have been willing 
 to peril the cause of infidelity by an argument so manifestly weak. 
 
 The third case referred to by Mr. Hume 1s derived from the cures 
 said to have been performed at the tomb of the Abbé Paris. 
 
 The argument in the case, as stated by Mr. Hume, rests on these 
 points: (a) The number of the miracles: ‘‘ There surely never was 
 a greater number ascribed to one person than those which were lately 
 said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of the Abbé 
 Paris.’ (6) The fact that these were ‘‘ every where talked of as usual 
 effects of that holy sepulchre.’’ (c) The fact that these miracles were 
 immediately proved to be true: ‘* What is more extraordinary, many 
 of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before judges 
 of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and distine- 
 tion, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is now in 
 the world.” (d) The fact that the Jesuits, enemies of the Jansenists, 
 in whose favor the miracles were said to have been wrought, ‘‘ though 
 a learned body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determined en- 
 emies to those opinions, were never able distinctly to refute or detect 
 them.” 
 
 In regard to this case, and the arguments in favor of these mira- 
 cles, considered with reference to a comparison with those of the New 
 Testament, the following remarks may be made : 
 
 (1.) The namber of the miracles said to have been wrought was, in 
 fact, exceeding small. Mr. Hume says there ‘‘ never was a greater 
 number ascribed to one person.” That, however, is not true, for a 
 much larger number has been ‘‘ ascribed” to Jesus of Nazareth. The 
 number of cures at the tomb of the Abbé Paris, as actually recorded by 
 historians, was nine only. These were ad/ that the zealous and inde- 
 
 * Works, vol. i., p. 202. 
 
 * 
 
APPENDIX. 447 
 
 fatigable Montgoron claimed to produce vouchers for, or claimed to 
 haye been proved to have been wrought at the tomb.* These were all 
 that were pretended to be cured out of the crowds of the infirm and 
 the sick who came or were brought to the tomb. It is true, indeed, 
 that another author who has given a record of those miracles, referred 
 to by Mr. Hume under the title of Recueil des Miracles de l’Abbé 
 Paris (Essays, vol. ii., p. 441), has mentioned a much larger number, 
 but they were miracles wrought, as he says, in the private chambers 
 of the sick, by virtue of the relics of the Abbé, or by images of the 
 saint, or by earth brought from under his monument.t As Mr. Hume 
 confines the argument to miracles wrought at the ‘‘ tomb,” it is proper 
 to notice those only. 
 
 What is particularly remarkable, however, in regard to these alleged 
 miracles is the small number out of the whole that are claimed to have 
 been cured. Many thousands of such persons—the afilicted in all 
 forms — visited the tomb. Nine only are vouched for as actually 
 cured. Now there has been no form of pretended miracles, or of de- 
 ception and imposture in medicine, in which a greater proportion have 
 not been restored to health—cured—than in this case. Under the ap- 
 plication of mesmerism, or ‘‘ quack” medicines of any kind, more mar- 
 vels than these have been accomplished—more cures effected. Many 
 more cases of cure—probably many more in proportion to the whole 
 number — occurred undoubtedly in the ‘‘ touch” for the ‘‘ king’s evil” 
 during the time when faith was exercised in the efficacy of that 
 ‘touch ;” that is, there were more cases of cure where, under the influ- 
 ence of the imagination, persons were ‘‘ touched ;” or where the disease 
 was imaginary and was thus removed ; or where a restoration to health 
 had been already commenced under the power of medicine, or the re- 
 cuperating power of nature; or where, from any cause, a recovery to 
 health was dated from such a touch. It is impossible to suppose that 
 this superstition could have been kept up from age to age if such had 
 not been the case. It is not difficult, in most or all of these cases, to 
 account for, these facts without supposing that the quack medicine 
 has genuine restoring properties; that the nostrum is valuable; that 
 mesmerism is founded in truth; or that there was rea/ efficacy in the 
 ‘*touch” for the ‘‘king’s evil.” Many of these diseases would be 
 healed by the mere course of nature ; many were nervous complaints, 
 and would be allayed and removed by a belief in the efficacy of the 
 medicine ; many would be healed under the influence of the imagina- 
 
 * Mons. Montgoron, the reporter of these miracles, was, as Mr. Hume says 
 (Essays, vol. ii., p. 441), a ‘‘counsellor or judge of the Parliament of Paris, a 
 man of figure and character, who was also a martyr to the cause.” 
 
 t Dr. Campbell, Examination of Mr. Hume’s Essay on Miracles. 
 
448 APPENDIX... 
 
 tion; many would be cases which would not bear a rigid examina- 
 tion, but would be cases where the healing was apparent, and where 
 there would be seen to be imposture at the foundation. 
 
 It is unnecessary to remark how unlike all this is to the miracles of 
 the Savior. Many thousands of cases came before him. ALL—not 
 the proportion of ‘‘nine” to thousands, but a//, according to the ac- 
 count in the New Testament, were healed (Matt., v., 24; xii., 15; 
 xiv., 14; xvii., 15; Luke, xxii., 51. . Comp. Acts,iv., 145 w., 16; 
 XXviii., 8). 
 
 (2.) Many of the cases at the tomb of the Abbé Paris were such as 
 could be cured by natural causes. One of the cures referred to by 
 Montgoron was that of Don Alphonzo de Palacios, who had lost one 
 eye, and who was afflicted with an inflammation in the other. The 
 inflamed eye was cured, but the lost eye was not restored to sight. 
 Had the lost eye been restored to sight, there could have been no 
 doubt that a miracle was wrought. An inflamed eye might be re- 
 stored by natural causes. In another case—that of Peter Gantior—one 
 of his eyes had been pricked with an awl. It is certainly possible that, 
 while there was temporary blindness, nature would haye restored the 
 sight. Many of the cases at the tomb were cases of paralytic and drop- 
 sical disorders—cases where nature, in numerous instances, produces 
 temporary if not permanent relief. It does not appear that any one 
 of the ‘‘ nine” was a case which could not be accounted for in that 
 way. 
 
 (3.) It was a fact that many of the devotees at the tomb, and some 
 of those who were asserted to have been cured, had been using medi-. 
 cines before, and continued to use them even when there. ‘‘'That the 
 Spanish youth had been using all the while a medicine prescribed by 
 an eminent -oculist was proved by the depositions of witnesses ; that 
 Gantior had begun to receive his sight before he had recourse to the 
 sepulchre was attested not only by his uncle, but even by himself, 
 when, as the Archbishop of Sens informs us, he signed a recantation 
 of what he had formerly advanced.”’* 
 
 (4.) None of the miracles at the tomb were instantaneous. All 
 that Christ and his apostles wrought were. ‘The blind saw at once; 
 the lame man leaped as an hart when told to walk; the paralytic took 
 his bed and walked immediately ; the young man of Nain sat up in- 
 stantaneously in the bier ; Lazarus came forth, at the very moment of 
 the command of the Savior, from the grave. Not so at the tomb of 
 the Abbé Paris. ‘‘ All the worshipers at the tomb persisted for days, 
 several of them for weeks, and some for months successively, daily im- 
 ploring the intercession of the Abbé, before they obtained relief from 
 
 * Dr. Campbell, Hume’s Essays, vol. ii., p. 588. t Id. Ibid. 
 
APPENDIX. 449 
 
 _ their complaints; and the relief which they received is, in most cases, 
 acknowledged to have been gradual.” 
 
 (5.) In view of these facts, and of the strong presumption in the 
 nature of the case that there might have been collusion and designed 
 imposture practiced to establish and maintain the credit of the ‘‘ saint” 
 and of the tomb, we are prepared to see what is the real force of the 
 remark which Mr, Hume so exultingly makes in the text of his Essay, 
 and which he labors to confirm in a note appended to it, that the tes- 
 timony in this case was above suspicion, and that it could not be re- 
 futed. Thus he says, in the Essay, ‘‘ What is more extraordinary, 
 many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot, before 
 judges of unquestioned integrity, attested by witnesses of credit and 
 distinction, in a learned age, and on the most eminent theatre that is 
 now in the world. Nor is this all; a relation of them was published 
 and dispersed every where; nor were the Jesuits, though a learned 
 body, supported by the civil magistrate, and determined enemies to 
 those opinions in whose favor the miracles were said to have been 
 wrought, ever able distinctly to refute or detect them.””* 
 
 Thus he says, also, in a note: ‘‘ Many of the miracles” [the word 
 **many” here means nine] ‘‘ of the Abbé Paris were proved immedi- 
 ately by witnesses before the officiating or bishop’s court at Paris, un- 
 der the eye of Cardinal Noailles, whose character for integrity and ca- 
 pacity was never contested even by his enemies.” ‘‘ No less a man 
 than the Duc de Chatillon, a duke and peer of France, of the highest 
 rank and family, gives evidence of a miraculous cure, performed on a 
 servant of his, who had lived several years in his house with a visible 
 and palpable infirmity.” ‘‘I shall conclude,” says he, ‘‘ with obsery- 
 ing that no clergy are more celebrated for strictness of life and man- 
 ners than the secular clergy of France, particularly the rectors or curés 
 of Paris, who bear testimony to these impostures. ”’t 
 
 The sum of the whole matter in regard to these alleged miracles is 
 this: We may surely and safely admit all the facts which are alleged 
 in the case.. The facts are these: (a) That great numbers of persons, 
 afflicted with various kinds of diseases, visited the tomb with the hope 
 of a cure. (b) That we may suppose that a part or all the cases of 
 those who are alleged to have been healed were cases of real disease, 
 or were not feigned. (c) That there was, in a few instances, a real 
 and permanent restoration to health. (d) That this occurred at the 
 tomb of the Abbé Paris, or after visiting that tomb. (e) That the 
 cases were examined before judges deemed competent to decide such 
 matters. (/) That the witnesses were credible witnesses, and were, 
 in many instances, above suspicion. (g) That it was impossible for 
 
 * Essays, vol. ii., p. 117. t Id. Ibid., p. 242, 244. 
 
450 APPENDIX. 
 
 the Jesuits to disprove these facts, and that they were constrained to 
 admit that these cures were actually wrought. 
 
 The material point, however, is not reached and affected by these 
 admitted facts—that all this was done by the saint; by his tomb; by 
 his virtues; or by God in attestation of his virtues, or in defense of 
 the party to which he belonged. If the remarks above made furnish 
 a plausible, oy PosstBLE explanation of the facts in the case—of all 
 that occurred—then the case does not amount to a miracle, and, there- 
 fore, whatever else may follow from it, it does not follow that Christ 
 did not raise Lazarus from the dead, or that he himself did not rise. 
 
 And these are al/.. These are the strongest cases which haye been 
 referred to as parallel to those in the New Testament, and as having 
 strength sufficient to neutralize the argument for the divine origin of. 
 Christianity as derived from miracles, These are selected from the 
 wide range of supposed supernatural agencies in the heathen and in 
 the Christian world: and it may be presumed that the best selection 
 has been made. The inquiry as to the cases which show/d be selected 
 embraced the entire period from the remotest ages to the time of Mr. 
 Hume himself, and was made by one who was an accomplished histo- 
 rian, and who was, perhaps, as familiar with the facts of history as 
 any man then living. Nothing new has been added to the argument 
 since his time; no more decided cases of miraculous agency have been 
 referred to; none have been furnished in heathen lands, or in the 
 Papal church, that would contribute more strength to the cause of in- 
 fidelity. It may be assumed now that no stronger cases wi// occur in 
 future times. If, therefore, these do not neutralize the force of the 
 testimony in favor of the miracles of the New Testament, then that 
 testimony remains in its full force. 
 
 The conclusion which we have reached is this: If the miracles of 
 the Bible can not be resolved into facts to be explained by natural 
 laws ; if they can not be philosophically placed on the same foundation 
 as witchcraft, divination, sorcery, mesmerism, and spirit-rapping, and 
 explained in the same manner; if they can not be disposed of as the 
 alleged miracles in the Christian Church after the time of the apostles 
 may be; and if they are not on a level with the miracles referred to 
 by skeptics as parallel cases, and are not to be explained in the same 
 manner, then the argument for the miracles of the Bible which has 
 been so satisfactory to a large part of the world for eighteen hundred 
 years is as strong as it can be supposed to have been in the first cen- 
 tury, and the evidence is to be regarded as placed on the same founda- 
 tion as that for well-attested historical facts that have gone into the 
 history of the world. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind that the real facts of history have gone into 
 
APPENDIX. 451 
 
 the history of the world, and have made the world what it now is. 
 Those facts, and the proper influence of those facts, can not now be de- 
 tached from history, or from the present condition of the world. The 
 facts in regard to the miracles of Christianity, also, have gone into the 
 history of the world, and can not be detached from it. The civilized 
 world is what it is now, and the whole world will be what it will be in 
 coming ages, because Christ was believed to have wrought miracles, and 
 to have been raised from the dead. ‘Those facts were attested by men 
 who saw them; who recorded them; who had no special interest to 
 promote by them; who abandoned all the opinions in which they had 
 been trained because they believed in them; who sacrificed all their 
 prejudices on the ground of that belief; who met reproach and calum- 
 ny, persecution, peril, and death in its most fearful forms, in attesta- 
 tion of the truth of those miracles; who never wavered in their state- 
 ments, who could never be induced by terrors or by bribes to give 
 utterance to a doubt about the truth of those events ; and or whom not 
 one—no, not one—ever breathed a suspicion that he had been himself 
 deceived, or that those with whom he was associated had conspired to 
 deceive the world. In a most intelligent age; in the very centre of 
 learning; among the most cultivated people, and in cities where the 
 talent and power of the world were concentrated, they bore their tes- 
 ' timony, and their testimony was believed. The religion was propa- 
 gated on the ground of these miracles. The religions of the world 
 were changed, and a new order of things, sending its influence onward 
 for eighteen hundred years, was instituted on that ground. Altars 
 were forsaken; temples were abandonded; priests were disrobed ; 
 laws were changed ; customs of long standing passed away on that 
 ground. <A new spirit was breathed into the literature of the world 
 on that ground; and philosophy took a new form on that ground. 
 Men were changed from vice to virtue on that ground; and thousands 
 of martyrs from all ranks of people—the rich, the honored, the gay, 
 the refined—on that ground sealed their faith with their blood. The 
 alleged miracles of Vespasian and those at the tomb of the Abbé 
 Paris have done nothing—literally nothing—permanently to affect the 
 faith, the religion, the hopes, the intelligence, or the morals of man- 
 kind; the miracles of Christ have changed the world. Myriads of 
 the human race, among the most intelligent and pure, have believed 
 that those miracles demonstrated that he came from God; there is 
 nothing yet to lead us to doubt that this will be still more prevailingly 
 the faith of the world in the ages to come, and that perpetuated faith 
 in those miracles will determine the condition of the nations of the 
 earth in the winding up of human affairs. 
 
 , THE END. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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