accomplishment of the ancient predictions. The prophets especially challenge the false priests and deities to the foretelling of distant events. They place the truth of their mission on the accomplishment of prophecy. The Almighty, in the text of the present discourse, demands of the idolatrous people, as the evidence of the existence of the gods they worshipped, the declaration of futurity. He bids them expound former things or predict future. He challenges them to order events of good or evil according to their denunciations. He exhorts them to infuse, if they can, dismay into his own servants, by establishing their pretensions. And he concludes, by condemning their gods as vanities and things of nought" Produce your cause, saith the Lord; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen; let them show the former things, what they be, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods: yea, do good, or do evil, that we may be dismayed, and behold it together. Behold, ye are of nothing, and your work of nought: an abomination is he that chooseth you."

It is the same still. I need not say that no religion but the Christian has ever stood on this ground. We made a similar remark in closing the argument from miracles. Other religions had professed to work occasional miracles, but no one, except the Christian, had ever been established, in the first instance, by clear miraculous operations. With regard to the palpable prediction of distinct events, the field is yet more completely void of pretenders. Neither in the origin nor the progress of any other religion has any series of predictions of future events, been delivered or appealed to. The oracles of paganism were petty and impotent mockeries of a prescience which they did not possess, and could not imitate. Mahometanism is unsupported by a single prediction. The apostate western church has claimed the power of miracles -vainly indeed-but it has claimed it; but to prophecy it has never put in a pretence: and the wretched attempts of occasional enthusiasts, in modern times, have only served, by their discomfiture, to mark out more clearly the boundaries between human folly and divine foreknowledge.

Here, then, the Almighty proposes to every one of us the

All that argu

most powerful external means of conviction. ment can effect on the judgment of men is in vain, if the prophetical word fail to persuade. And yet, be it well remembered, it will fail to persuade, if the heart be not sincere and humble in the investigation. A certain state of mind is, as I must again and again remind you, essential to a consideration of the Christian question. In a humble and teachable spirit, the blaze of glory bursting forth from the word of prophecy penetrates and convinces the soul-the awakened heart trembles at its former obduracy-the greatness and the wisdom of God shine forth in every step of the investigation -the person and grace of the divine Redeemer are illustrated by every fulfilment of his word. But to the prejudiced and unwilling student, to the objector and the sophist, to the immoral and the proud, to the presumptuous and self-confident, prophecy speaks in vain. The eye will hover round the dark and obscure parts, and close its view to the bright and luminous. The prophetic word especially requires that candid temper, that simplicity which our Saviour enjoins, where he says, "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light;" which he illustrates, as I have before noted, by the example of children; and commends in the person of the guileless Nathanael; and which is mentioned, as a characteristic of the first Christian converts under the expression of "singleness of heart." They who apply themselves with such a disposition, are in that state of mind in which only they correspond with the economy of grace. In such persons the "prophetic word," whether written in the Scriptures, or indicated by the events of mankind, will "have free course, and be glorified."

Let us, then, learn more and more of this heavenly temper. Let us look forward to that last solemn judgment, of which many of the divine prophecies are adumbrations and pledges,* with solemn preparation, with jealous watchfulness, with holy awe; and let us anticipate those glorious triumphs-and, as it were, advance and bring them on-which are to close the whole scheme of fulfilled prediction on earth, and to introduce and fall into, the unbroken peace and glory of the eternal abodes of heaven.

*

Especially the prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of the fall of the western apostacy.

211

LECTURE X.

THE PROPAGATION OF CHRISTIANITY.

1 COR. I. 19-21, and 27-29.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, I will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world?__Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound things that are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen; yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are; that no flesh should glory in his presence.

HAVING Considered the arguments for the divine authority of the Christian religion, derived from the performance of undeniable miracles, and the numerous prophecies now fulfilling before our eyes, in the events of the world, we come next to contemplate the manifest interference of Almighty God, in the establishment of Christianity, and its subsequent continuance to the present day.

This subject may be considered in the facts themselves which it embraces-and in the agreement of these facts with the predictions of our Lord and the prophets under the preceding dispensation.

The propagation and preservation of Christianity are, in themselves, proofs of divine authority; but when considered as the accomplishment of a long train of previous predictions, they have a still more convincing force.

The power of God engaged in favor of Christianity will appear, if we consider THE PROPAGATION ITSELF THE OB

STACLES SURMOUNTED-and the MORAL AND SPIRITUAL CHANGE produced in the converts.

I. Let us call your attention to THE PROPAGATION ITSELF OF CHRISTIANITY.

1. And here, if we reflect on the singularity of the attempt to propagate any system merely religious, it will lead us to attribute the success of Christianity to a divine interference. For no religion, purely as a religion, was ever propagated, but the Christian. Heathenism was never a matter of dissemination or conversion. It had no creed, no origin distinct from the corrupt traces of a remote and fabulous antiquity. It was a creature of human mould, contrived for the sake of human legislation. The Greeks and Romans imposed it not on their subject nations. Mahometanism was the triumph of the sword. Conquest, not religious faith, was its manifest object; rapine, violence and bloodshed were its credentials.

No religion was ever attempted to be spread through the world by the means of instruction and persuasion, with an authority of its own, but Christianity. The idea never came into the mind of man to propagate a religion, having for its set design and exclusive object, the enlightening of mankind with a doctrine professedly divine, till Christianity said to her disciples, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to

every creature."

2. The rapidity and extent of the propagation of the gospel were such as to prove its divine origin. On the very first day of its promulgation, three thousand were converted; these soon increased to five thousand. Multitudes, both of men and women, were afterwards daily added to the new religion. Before the end of thirty years, the gospel had spread through Judea, Galilee, Samaria, almost all the numerous districts of Lesser Asia; through Greece, and the islands of the Ægean sea, and the sea-coast of Africa, and had passed on to the capital of Italy. Great multitudes believed at Antioch in Syria, at Joppa, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica, Beræa, Iconium, Derbe, Antioch in Pisidia, at Lydda and Saron. Converts also are mentioned at Tyre, Cæsarea, Troas, Athens, Philippi, Lystra, Damascus. Thus far the sacred narrative conducts us. The religion being thus widely diffused, the New Testament carries us no further. But all ecclesiastical and profane history concurs in describing the rapid progress of the new doctrine, Tacitus, Suetonius, Juvenal, Pliny,

Martial, Marcus Aurelius, sufficiently testify the propagation of Christianity. To the statements of Tacitus and Pliny we have already adverted briefly: we must now produce them more at length.

Tacitus thus writes of transactions which took place just at the time when the history in the Acts of the Apostles closes, about thirty years after the crucifixion; he is speaking of the suspicions which fell on the emperor Nero, of having caused a fire which had happened at Rome:-"But neither these exertions, nor his largesses to the people, nor his offerings to the gods, did away the infamous imputation under which Nero lay, of having ordered the city to be set on fire. To put an end, therefore, to this report, he laid the guilt, and inflicted the most cruel punishments upon a set of people, who were held in abhorrence for their crimes, and called by the vulgar, Christians. The Founder of that name was Christ, who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus checked for awhile, broke out again; and spread not only over Judea, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, whither every thing bad upon earth finds its way, and is practised. Some who confessed their sect, were first seized; and afterwards, by their information, a vast multitude were appre hended, who were convicted, not so much of the crime of burning Rome, as of hatred to mankind. Their sufferings at their execution were aggravated by insult and mockery, for some were disguised in the skins of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, some were crucified, and others were wrapt in pitched shirts, and set on fire when the days closed, that they might serve as lights to illuminate the night. Nero lent his own gardens for these executions; and exhibited at the same time a mock Circensian entertainment, being a spectator of the whole, in the dress of a charioteer, sometimes mingling with the crowd on foot, and sometimes viewing the spectacles from his car. This conduct made the sufferers pitied; and though they were criminals, and deserving the severest punishments, yet they were considered as sacrificed, not so much out of regard to the public good, as to gratify the cruelty of

This passage proves that Christianity had been rapidly and extensively propagated throughout Judea, and had gained a vast multitude of converts at Rome-so many, as to attract

*Tacitus apud Paley.