societies which were instituted in Syria, none were more ancient or more illustrious than those of Damascus, of Berea or Aleppo, and of Antioch. The prophetic introduction of the Apocalypse has described and immortalized the seven churches of Asia; Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardes, Laodicea, and Philadelphia: and their colonies were soon diffused over that populous country. In a very early period, the islands of Cyprus and Crete, the provinces of Thrace and Macedonia, gave a favourable reception to the new religion: and Christian republics were soon founded in the cities of Corinth, of Sparta, and of Athens. To these domestic testimonies we may add the confession, the complaints, and the apprehensions, of the Gentiles themselves. From the writings of Lucian, a philosopher who had studied mankind and who describes their manners in the most lively colours, we may learn, that under the reign of Commodus, his native country of Pontus was filled with Epicureans and Christians. Within fourscore years after the death of Christ, the humane Pliny laments the magnitude of the evil which he vainly attempted to eradicate. In his very curious epistle to the Emperor Trajan, he affirms, that the temples were almost deserted, that the sacred victims. scarcely found any purchasers, and that the superstition had not only infected the cities but had even spread itself into the villages and the open country of Pontus and Bithynia*."

3. From such innumerable testimonies it might

* Gibbon's Hist. of the Decline and Fall. Chap. xv. vol. ii. p. 357-360.

have been thought, that the proper existence of Christ upon earth would at least have been universally allowed. But, while Mr. Gibbon, judging by the common and well-known laws of moral evidence, entertains no doubt of the fact; Mr. Volney chooses rather to follow the extraordinary speculations of Mr. Burigni. This person he whimsically styles a sagacious writer: doubtless because his rare sagacity has been shown by what his admirer calls an absolute demonstration, that even the personal existence of Christ in this our nether world rests not upon a more solid basis than that of Hercules or Osiris or Buddha. By any sober judge of historical evidence, the testimony of such a writer as Tacitus to the fact of Christ's existence upon earth and his crucifixion by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, even if we omit the cloud of other concurring parallel testimonies, would not be placed upon a light footing: but Mr. Volney, quite satisfied with the demonstration of Burigni, lays it down as a clear case, that no such person as our Lord ever flourished in this world; and, on that position, frames a theory, which on pain of being ridiculed as a generation of credulous dupes, we are forthwith required to adopt.

What then is the theory in question? Truly, if it can be set forth without a smile, it is no other than the following.

Mr. Volney gravely assures us, on the word of a philosopher emancipated from all vulgar prejudices in favour of historical testimony, that the divine personage, whom Christians, during the space of well nigh eighteen centuries, have ignorantly revered as their crucified Redeemer

is neither more nor less than the sun in the firmament; that the virgin Mary is one of the zodiacal signs, the constellation Virgo to wit; and that Christ's crucifixion by Pontius Pilate and his resurrection from the dead on the third day are nothing more than the sun's declension to the winter solstice and his subsequent return to the summer solstice through the vivifying season of spring*.

4. I have thought it right to notice this hypothesis; though I am far from wishing uncandidly to intimate, that it is the standard doctrine of Infidelity. The ludicrous credulity of Mr. Volney is, I believe, the sole property of himself and of those few select friends who have been initiated into his greater Mysteries.

We may venture then to assume, that the evangelical narratives set forth a substantially

*The theory of Mr. Volney is discussed at large in Faber's Origin of Pagan Idol. book vi, chap. 6. §. 111. 1. vol. iii. p. 648-654. Mr. Volney, to rid himself of the troublesome evidence of Tacitus, who flourished only about seventy years after the time when Pontius Pilate was the Roman procurator of Judea, is willing to imagine, that he wrote from the false depositions of the Christian prisoners; who, though they knew all the while that Christ was the sun, declared that he was a Jew who had been crucified by Pilate. This falsehood, it seems, was never detected; until Mr. Volney, at the end of some eighteen centuries, luckily took it in hand. For the Roman magistrates, before whom the depositions were taken, did not happen to think of making the very natural inquiry, whether, seventy years before, such a man as Christ had or had not been crucified by Pilate nor did a single Jewish or provincial witness come forward to declare that the whole story was a gross fabrication. Hence according to Mr. Volney, it very easily happened, that the unlucky historian was shamefully befooled by a set of gross liars, who themselves chose to be worried by dogs and to be crucified and to be burned alive in support of what they all the while knew to be an absurd falsehood. Nothing, surely, save the credulity of a professed unbeliever, could digest so portentous a discovery, as this of our French philosopher.

true account of the proceedings and conduct and character and principles and sayings of the founder of Christianity and his immediate followers, just as the writings of Xenophon and Plato similarly exhibit the various lineaments of their master Socrates: for to deny a position, supported upon such strong and incontrovertible testimony, as the main body of infidels are perfectly aware, evinces a much greater degree of credulity, than to admit it. On these grounds, discarding without further ceremony the hypothesis of Mr. Volney, I shall reason from the general circumstances detailed in the New Testament, just as I would reason from the general circumstances detailed in the Memorabilia of Xenophon.

II. The founder of the Christian religion expressly claimed to be a messenger sent from God. "Ye both know me, (said he to the Jews,) and ye know whence I am : and I am not come of myself; but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him: for I am from him, and he hath sent me. The word which ye hear, is not mine, but the Father's which sent met." Now the infidel denies, that Christ was sent from God; and pronounces, that the Gospel is not a revelation from heaven. Hence, on his own principles, he is bound to maintain, either that Christ was a daring impostor, or that he was a brain-sick enthusiast for if the divine authority of his mission be denied, he must inevitably be pronounced either the one or the other of these two char

acters.

* John vii. 28, 29,

† John xiv. 24.

Such being the case, the point to be considered is, whether, from the historical documents which have come down to us, we have any sufficient evidence to esteem Christ either an impostor or an enthusiast.

1. Perhaps there never was a period, which offered more tempting invitations to the projects of a designing impostor, than that, during which the prophet of Nazareth exhibited himself as a teacher sent from God.

The Jews, highly elated by their religious privileges and exulting in the character of being the peculiar people of Jehovah, bore with extreme impatience and dissatisfaction the Roman yoke which had been imposed upon them. Their eagerness to throw off this yoke was increased by a very remarkable but perfectly well-attested circumstance. From calculating the numbers specified in one of their ancient prophecies, they had, for some years before the birth of Christ, been in full expectation of a mysterious personage; who had been repeatedly announced by the seers of their nation, as a mighty deliverer and a powerful sovereign*: and this expectation continued in full force, until the sacking of Jerusalem by Titus; which occurred about thirty seven years after the death of Christ. That such an expectation was generally prevalent shortly before the birth of Christ, is evident from the language used by the evangelist Luke respecting Anna the prophetess: having herself beheld the infant Jesus, and having acknowledged him as the promised deliverer, she spake of him, we are

*Dan. ix. 24-27.