And all this is the more observable, because, whilst the proofs of Christianity are thus in progress, the objections and reasonings of infidelity are diminishing in force and fading away. Truth takes root and flourishes; fallacies droop and die. They appear blooming for an instant; but, wanting root, they perish. As conscience recovers its sway, and the force of particular temptations is diminished, Christianity regains her dominion over the heart. Infidelity now has scarcely a plausible argument left. The evidences of revelation strengthen upon reflection, mature with our years, advance in force and practical demonstration as we approach eternity, and gather new brightness in the time of sickness, sorrow, and impending dissolution. There never was a mind brought fairly to bear on the subject, but fresh materials sprung up around it, just in proportion to its means of knowledge and capacities of

does it demonstrate to us that the world may at his will be burnt up-That if he who said, "Let there be light and there was light," and "who holds the waters in the hollow of his hand," were to say, LET THE WATERS BE DECOMPOSED,' the "elements would melt with fervent heat, and the heavens pass away with a great noise."*

These instances are taken from a thousand others; they are by no means necessary to the Christian argument. Whatever Mr. Locke thought, the Scripture account of man's moral nature, and the impress of God upon his mind, was not to be doubted; in whatever ignorance we might have remained as to the dreadfully explosive constituents of water, the truth of the future destruction of the world by fire would not have been less certain.

But it must be obvious, that facts such as these, which illustrate the positions and manifest something of the proba bility of the events which Revelation foretells, are not without their importance.

6 Bishop J. B. Sumner apologises for answering an argument of Volney, on the ground that, bad as it is, it is the only one he can find advanced against Christianity.

* 2 Peter iii. 10, 11.

combination; nor is there any period which so fully illustrates its solid virtue, as the moment of the decay of life and the lapse of all earthly things.

At the present time Christianity is the religion of all the civilized nations of the world. After eighteen hundred years, she stands as the acknowledged source of religious truth and duty. The mind of man under the greatest advantages, the verdict of intellect is in favour of Christianity. On such a question, we are not to estimate the weight of authority by numbers, but by the amount of inquiry, by the investigation actually made, by the habits of intellectual effort, the knowledge, the information, the moral feeling, in those who prosecute it. In this view one Christian nation outweighs all the prostrate people of the Indies and Americas; and the public attestation to the Christian faith by the flower of the human race, demonstrates the force of its evidences upon the minds best capable of estimating them aright.

In short, the evidences have so accumulated, that individuals can only prosecute in detail certain divisions of them. To enter upon the whole question fully, a man should be a stranger to no branch of history or science; he must identify himself with the designs of Providence in every age; he must be the narrator of the wonderful dispensations of God, and the moral education of the human race. He must recount all the labours of the vast society of Christians, which is the intermediate chain between earth and heaven. He must embrace the whole kindred of men, nineteen-twentieths of whom entered into history with Christianity. He must trace out the new principle of action which the gospel sets at work-love, which constitutes such a spring in the mechanism of social life, as ultimately to change human society, and prepare its re-construction on a new basis, without injuring any established relations of it. He must follow out the new literature which Christianity has

introduced; and trace out the history of the mass of the nations of the world in their progress or their decline their civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, all that characterises or modifies the moral existence of And when he has attempted this, or any division of this infinite subject, he will confess that he has only saluted the question at the threshold, and that he must leave to others the development-its progress and accumulation.

man.

What a prospect this! What scenes stretch all around! What an expansive and life-giving tide is Christianity! What a gradual but steady progress do we perceive in its evidences, from the first source of grace in paradise to the present hour! But, in the next place,

II. Let us observe THE INCIDENTAL AND UNEXPECTED MANNER IN WHICH THE FLOOD HAS BEEN THUS FORMED.

For whence have come the tributary streams? Have artificial beds been excavated to convey to it with immense labour the waters of other rivers? Have channels been turned from their course, like that of the ancient Euphrates, by the arm of power? No; most has been incidental and unlooked for, so far as man has been concerned.

We have repeatedly noticed the artless and inartificial character of the Christian evidences; their independence of each other; the sudden influx and convergence of the materials of proof. And now that we are casting back a glance upon the whole subject, we repeat the remark. We bid you reflect that all this mass of testimony is not a contrived, systematic arrangement, set forth in the holy Scriptures, or prepared by inspired writers, and handed down for the conviction of mankind. No, every thing arose spontaneously. Circumstances have created the Christian evidences.

Enough was always included in the

Revelation itself for the conviction of every sincere inquirer. But, for the rest, all was called forth by occasion, amidst the struggles of human passions and the conflicts of the church with her foes.

Christianity, in her native dignity, threw herself upon mankind. Her divine records plead her own cause. Here is always enough to verify a divine Revelation. Every thing else is incidental, and was drawn into argument as occasion arose.

The first Christian apologists had no view to the eighteenth century, or the conviction of nations then unborn, when they were compelled to appeal to the heathen emperors, on the injustice of the sufferings to which they were exposed. Their object was to defend themselves from the calumnies with which they were assailed, and to effect the conversion of their contemporaries. What did Justin Martyr, or Tertullian, or St. Augustine, foresee of the use which would be made of their testimony a thousand or fifteen hundred years after their own times? Still less did Tacitus and Suetonius imagine the important purposes to which their admissions of all the chief facts of Christianity would be turned, after the indignant contempt of the historians themselves had become harmless. What did Julian or Porphyry foresee of the value of those incidental notices of the facts connected with Christianity, which escaped them in the warmth of their invective against the religion? When Celsus, in his enmity against the gospel, overwhelmed Origen with his sophisms and cavils, little did he imagine that, the arguments on either side being disregarded, the facts which were admitted in common, would form a bulwark of the Christian faith. Still less did the Jewish writers conceive that, in attributing the Christian miracles to the powers of an occult magic, they were acknowledging facts on which we should build our faith, ages after the hypothesis of a false philosophy had been exploded.

In the mean time, the Christian religion marched on,-in the midst of the scorn of the learned, the force of the powerful, the hatred of governments, the malignity of the Heathen and Jewish priesthoodsand, sustained by an invisible hand, made good its cause, till Constantine mounted the throne, and the empire assumed the name of Christian. All was natural, unpretending, honest truth.

Proofs, however, began imperceptibly to be collected. The authenticity of the sacred books was examined; the records of martys were searched into ; the tradition of ancient facts was investigated; ecclesiastical memoirs were composed; controversies arose ; the numbers on each side are mentioned; the councils which assemble are enumerated; the condemnation of heretics is placed on record. Thus, facts and doctrines are incidentally ascertained. Things come out by occasions, by circumstances unforeseen and unplanned. It is only after a lapse of centuries that men's attention is directed to the collecting into a series the successive proofs. The tide of time rolls down, and bears on its surface the various materials, from which diligent observation culls here and there a particle of unexpected and important evidence; as the wild American gathers from the bed of his magnificent rivers the minute but valuable particles of gold and silver. As literature widens, the scattered elements of proof are brought in-coins, medals, inscriptions, antiquities, re-written manuscripts discovered in monasteries, contribute their unexpected testimony.

Not only the first occasions are unlooked for, but the subsequent reasons for bringing out and detailing the proofs, are equally incidental.

A literary age abounds with infidelity. The credibility of the gospel history is, after seventeen hundred years, reduced into regular proof,' for the purpose of meeting the new circumstances of the times. It is

7 By the labours of Lardner and his contemporaries..