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when he informed his disciples that they were to finish the work which he had begun? You cannot fail to be convinced that the proof, founded on an agency more exclusively supernatural, would have become gradually weaker every succeeding generation, particularly if the testimony proceeded through ages of ignorance, credulity, and superstition; whereas the evidence arising from a moral fact, or a simple historical event, never loses its value, but, on the contrary, becomes stronger and stronger in proportion to its antiquity, and as mankind grow more enlightened and more inquisitive.

It is, in short, the effect of experience, and of an enlarged knowledge of nature, to weaken the confidence of speculative minds in physical signs and wonders; and more especially because they find that men, before they are capable of making due inquiry into proximate causes, are too ready to believe such things; and, consequently, that even sincere and honest persons have been led, through their ignorance of the laws which regulate the succession of events in the material world, to proclaim a miracle where they had merely witnessed a novelty. But sound argument, profound knowledge, rational doctrines, and a beneficent morality, joined to wisdom, zeal, pureness of living, piety,

and disinterestedness, all rendered effective by that demonstration of the spirit, and of power, which was manifested by the first preachers of our holy faith,-constitute a species of evidence which acquires additional weight as society improves in learning and reflection; and, on this account, the proof arising from the propagation of the Gospel by the ministry of the Apostles, carries with it a degree of conviction which is most felt by the most thinking men, and which will always keep pace with the progress of science and of enlightened research.

To illustrate what I have now stated, may I not appeal to yourselves, and ask you, whether you are not more struck with the speech that St. Paul pronounced before Agrippa, or with the address which he delivered on Mars-hill at Athens, than you are with the account of the sick who were cured by means of the handkerchiefs and aprons which had touched the body of that holy man? In all ages, the power of imagination has done much to remove diseases; and the Roman Catholic, accordingly, has a thousand stories to tell of the wonderful ef. fects produced upon the distempered, by the mere application of a piece of wood or of a rag of linen; but no physical action on the nerves could have inspired the reasoning employed by

the great apostle of the Gentiles, or warmed the eloquence of St. Peter's first sermon; when the one almost induced the king, before whom he spoke, to become a Christian, and the other gained over three thousand of his countrymen to the faith of the Redeemer.

It was, therefore, expedient that our blessed Lord, having died for our sins and risen again for our justification, should ascend into the heavens, and leave to the ministry of his chosen servants the great work of converting the world; that men might be led by their judgment rather than by the mere authority of tradition; and acknowledge that their belief is founded not on the terror of the eye or of the ear, but on the evidence of a divine commission, exercised through the medium of human reason and on the ground of human motives.

It is a remarkable fact, as connected with the subject now before us, that the Apostles, although empowered to work miracles, do not ap pear to have performed one, in order to prove a doctrine or to establish a point of faith. The Redeemer, acting on the principle which we suppose him to have had in view, and which he himself adopted in his memorable conversation with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, seems to have recommended to his ministers to

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employ, as their principal instrument for evangelizing the nations, the complete knowledge of divine truth with which they were to be supplied on the day of Pentecost. "He command"ed us," says St. Peter, "to preach unto the

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people, and to testify that it is he which was "ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and

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dead," and "that to him gave all the prophets "witness."* We find, too, that St Paul everywhere pursued the same course. At Ephesus he went into the synagogue, "and spake boldly for "the space of three months, disputing and per"suading the things concerning the kingdom of "God: But when divers were hardened and be"lieved not, but spake evil of that way before "the multitude, he departed from them."+ He made no reference to the supernatural powers with which he was invested as an inspired servant of Christ; but having failed to convince his Jewish audience out of their own Scriptures, that Jesus was the Messias, he left them to their stubborn incredulity. In a similar manner he conducted himself towards those of his countrymen whom he found at Rome: "And when they had appointed him a day, there came many to him into his lodgings; to whom he

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* Acts x. 42, 43.

Acts xix. 8, 9.

"expounded and testified the kingdom of God, "persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of "the law of Moses and out of the Prophets, "from morning till evening. And some be"lieved the things which were spoken, and "some believed not; and when they agreed "not among themselves, they departed."* He did not propose to determine the interesting question on which they had reasoned, by an ap peal to the omniscience and power of God; but finding that they were immoveably fixed in their prejudices, he allowed the gainsayers to withdraw from his presence unconverted; only reminding them of the description, contained in one of their prophetical writings, of the gross heart and the dull ear, which refused all access to the knowledge of divine things.†

On the ground, then, of the doctrine which I have endeavoured to establish, that the propagation of Christian faith and knowledge throughout the earth was meant, by the Redeemer, to be effected by human means, I proceed to make a few practical observations applicable to the circumstances in which we are at present assem

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