into works of a scientific description, those doubts and objections which they had not the manliness to avow. We charge them with prosecuting a covert and dishonest warfare. We charge them with treachery to the best interests of truth and sincerity. We say that the artifices of Hume and Gibbon in this country, and of the Encyclopædists in an adjoining one, are disgraceful to men professing to be under the government of Almighty God, and amenable to him for their

actions.

We charge them, lastly, with a measure of IMPURITY AND LICENTIOUSNESS which has no parallel, except in the grossest productions of heathen Greece and Rome. We charge them with pursuing this obscure and disgusting purpose with an art and a pertinacity, which indicates the total dissolution of moral principle and a heart entirely corrupted by vice and sensuality.

In short, we demand one thing. Where is the infidel publication which is calm, well-reasoned, placed on fair grounds of historical fact, proposed with the modesty and fear which the awful responsibility involved demands? Where is the manly, upright, serious treatise, bearing the marks of a sincere, a devout, and an unprejudiced inquirer? I know not

one.

The only relief to the benevolent mind, amidst such a mass of moral evil, is to turn to the useful labours and meritorious and able writings of sincere Christians. What do they propose to themselves? What public undertakings do they engage in ? What kind of efforts do they sustain for the mere good of others, and in obedience to their Saviour's commands? What probability is there, that they have truth on their side in what they do? These are the questions we propose.

I appeal to every one competent to form a judg

ment. I say, every true, spiritual Christian is the cheerful servant of his fellow-creatures. I say, he not only sustains the principles of religion and morals; that he not only performs the ordinary obligations resulting from them; that he not only is animated with the purest spirit of benevolence; but that his life is a life of labour for the good of others; he has a principle of effort and active duty implanted in his breast, which shrinks from no difficulties, refuses no exertion, yields to no discouragements in a good cause. In what department of human life, is not the sincere Christian foremost, prompt, persevering in planning and executing schemes of beneficence and charity?

Take the ministers of religion, those who are real Christians in heart, (for we own no others,) what, I ask, has been their course of effort in every age since the propagation of Christianity? What their inextinguishable zeal for the present and future welfare of mankind? What their laborious and ceaseless exertions ?

Take

Consider the different classes of Christians. the missionary who, like Swartz, to whom we before referred, or Zeigenbald, or Brainerd, or Elliot, or Gerické, or Claudius Buchanan, or Martyn, have in silent and unobserved and distant labours, spent an useful and honourable life.

Observe the sincere Christians who are engaged in various professions, or occupied in commercial pursuits-what are the extensive schemes which they form to make their secular subserve their religious duties to make their profession or their commerce a channel of communicating spiritual blessings?

Scrutinize again the individual believer in the more retired orders of Christian society-the female sex, the various descriptions of domestic servants, in their private but assiduous diligence, beyond and beside their immediate duties, for promoting the glory of God and the happiness of mankind. The female cha

racter, elevated and refined by Christianity, is not only preserved from debasement by the purity of the Christian precepts, but is animated to patient and humble, though retired, efforts to advance the highest interests of humanity.

Christianity is all effort and activity for the good of others. The believer loves his neighbour as himself.

And why should I contrast the WRITINGS of the true followers of Christianity, with the disgusting picture which truth has compelled me to draw of the infidel publications? Why should I oppose the HUMILITY of the Christian writer, with the egotism of the infidel? Why contrast his SELF-RENUNCIATION and conscious unworthiness and PURSUIT OF THE SOLE GLORY OF HIS GOD AND SAVIOUR, with the vanity and love of fame of the infidel? Why should I set off his BENIGNITY, AND KINDNESS, AND OPENNESS TO CONVICTION, AND FREEDOM FROM PERSONAL FEELINGS, with the malignity and rancour of the unbeliever? What avails my bringing into contrast the regard to truth, the plain research for matters of fact, the piety and awe at the name of God and reverence of his majesty, which pervade the Christian writings, with the false and impious and contemptuous spirit of infidels? Why should I fatigue you by detailing the strong moral distinctions between virtue and vice, in all their ramifications, which mark the Christian treatises, and the pernicious confusion of right and wrong which prevails in the infidel? No; I will not pursue the contrast, I will not darken the charges of dishonest quotation, insidious and cowardly methods of attack, and impurity of description and language, brought so justly against infidelity, by dwelling in this place on the historical testimonies and uncontroverted facts on which the Christian cause rests; on the open, manly, uncompromising fortitude which it displays; and the unsul

lied purity and delicacy of all its precepts and tendencies. All these things are too well known.

But I ask, how is it that Christian writers are so full, so manly, so laborious in the positive exhibition of the doctrines and precepts of their religion, when nothing of the sort can be shown in the writings of infidels as to the system of natural duty which they profess to defend? Where are the writings, on the unbeliever's part, which answer to our Christian fathers, to our commentators, to our ecclesiastical histories, to our moral essays, to our volumes of sermons, to our bodies of divinity? Where are any writers, on their professed scheme of religion, which answer to our Cyprian, our Chrysostom, our St. Austin, our Bernard? Where to our Hooker, our Jewel, our Luther, our Melancthon, our Pascal, our Sir Isaac Newton, our Bishop Pearson, our Baxter, our Archbishop Leighton, our Bishop Hall, our Doddridge? A death-like silence prevails. I can find no one Christian book that does not partake of the essential moral elements of truth, purity, and sincerity; and no one infidel writing that does. No. It is unnecessary for me to sum up this second head. I content myself with appealing to every conscience, whether our argument does not strengthen as we proceed--whether, in point of public labour and writings, Christianity does not bear as prominently the seal of truth and God and heaven upon it, as infidelity does that of falsehood and of the rebellious spirits of darkness? I ask, whether, after having shown the futility of the objections of infidelity in themselves, we do not seem to have completed the overthrow, by exhibiting the deliberate aim of those who framed them? I ask, whether objections are worth considering which must be culled out from the dishonesty, egotism, malignity, and moral pollution, of the works in which they are buried?

But an additional fact will raise this whole branch

In numerous cases,

of proof to a yet higher point. all these excellencies of the Christian character have been the result of a DECIDED CONVERSION FROM THE VERY INFIDELITY which lies on the other side of our contrast. Multitudes of these Christians, whose principles, moral conduct, benevolence, and useful writings, we have been considering, were once enemies of Christianity, vain, perverse, arrogant, debased, profligate; but they were brought to consideration-they were led to examine, (as I have mentioned in the case of Mr. Boyle,) the question of Christianity with calmness. The result was an entire change from the degradation and vices of infidelity, to the elevation and purity of the Christian faith. They proclaim the alteration. They confess with grief the motives which dictated their former rebellion; they distinctly avow the source of their errors and guilt; they open to us the real cause of the objections of infidelity. Thus the camp of the enemy betrays itself. The Christian advocate, like Augustine in the fourth century, is brought out from the midst of its foes; and we have the singular advantage of knowing the ground on which infidels, continuing such, stand, by the ground on which the Christian convert confesses he once stood himself.

Infidelity has nothing to show of a kind similar to this. Where are her converts from among devout and serious Christians? Where are those who confess the guilt of believing the revelation of the Bible? Where are the regrets and penitence for having obeyed the gospel? All is a blank. Infidelity and her objections, are DISOBEDIENCE; faith, with her solid fruits, is OBEDIENCE to the great God and Father of all.

But I hasten to the last division of our contrast.

III, THEIR DEATHS AND PREPARATION FOR AN ETERNAL STATE OF BEING.

And here the interval widens: the gloom deepens