herself under the sanction of eighteen centuries, illustrated by the learning of her disciples, professed by all civilized nations. It cannot be said that less human effort in the aggregate has been employed for the conversion of the Jews, than was used by the twelve apostles. Much more money has been expended ; much more learning has been devoted; much more human power has been exerted; many more individuals have been employed. The same gospel has been preached. The same arguments have been urged. And why should not corresponding effects appear? "There is reason to think that there were more Jews converted by the apostles in one day, than have since been won over in the last thousand years."* The simple explanation is and must be, that the great power of God was with the apostles for the establishment of the truth, in a degree far greater than that in which it is now vouchsafed to his ministers in promoting the wide extension of truth.

From the Jews turn to the heathens. There is no reason to believe that the heathenism of the present day is any more opposed to the propagation of Christianity, than that of the world in the age of the apostles. Instead of twelve, there are hundreds of laborers in this field-men of education, talent, indefatigable zeal, undaunted devotion. The art of printing has furnished them with facilities of which the apostles, unless it be conceded that they possessed the miraculous gift of tongues, were entirely destitute. The Scriptures are now circulated in full;

while, in the days of St. Paul, the canon being incomplete, they were circulated only in parts. In addition to all this, Christianity is recommended among many heathen nations by the political importance of the countries from which its preachers have gone, and in some by the actual coöperation of Christian powers ruling in the midst of pagan institutions. With these important advantages, what is the success of present efforts among the heathen? Enough, indeed, to reward all the zeal expended in their support-enough to show that still the power of God is with the gospel, and that ample encouragement is given for all the increase of effort which Christians can ever bestow on the heathen, but nothing comparable with the success of the apostles. Paul was instrumental in converting more heathens in thirty years, than all modern missionaries in the last five hundred. Explain this fact. It is absurd to attempt it, in view of all the circumstances of the case, except you admit the solution given by Paul himself: "I have planted, and Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." Without this grand truth, "God gave the increase," Christianity would have perished on the cross of its founder.

I have now set before you a miracle, the evidence of which no eye can be too blind to see: Christianity universally propagated, and yet propagated by no earthly influence but that of the apostles. This is the miracle. It is as directly contrary to the laws of nature and to universal experience, as if at the word of man the desert of Arabia should bud and

blossom like a fruitful garden, or the sepulchre give up its dead. As long as this one fact, the propagation of Christianity, shall remain, the gospel will be supported by a weight of proof which infidels can remove only by taking away the foundation of all inductive evidence, and bringing down the whole temple of human knowledge to their own destruction.

Now, in conclusion, let us see what an unbeliever must believe, in consistency with his profession. He must believe that the apostles were either such weak-minded men as to imagine that their crucified Master had been with them from time to time during forty days after his burial, had conversed with them and eaten with them, and that they had every sensible evidence of his resurrection, while in truth he had not been near them, but was still in his sepulchre; or else that they were so wicked and deceitful as to go all over the world preaching that he was risen from the dead, when they knew it was a gross fabrication. Suppose the unbeliever to choose the latter of these alternatives. Then he believes not only that those men were so singularly attached to this untruth as to give themselves up to all manner of disgrace and persecution and labor for the sake of making all the world believe it, knowing that their own destruction must be the consequence; but also, what is still more singular, that when they plunged, immediately at the outset of their ministry, into an immense multitude of those who, having lately crucified the Saviour, were full of enmity to his disciples, they succeeded, without learning, eloquence, power,

or a single conceivable motive, in making three thousand of them believe that he whom they had seen on the cross was indeed alive again; and believe it so fully, as to renounce every thing and be willing to suffer any thing for the sake of it, and this on the very spot where the guards that had kept the sepulchre were at hand to tell what was become of the body of Jesus. He must believe, moreover, that although, in attempting to propagate a new religion to the exclusion of every other, they were undertaking what was entirely new, and opposed to the views of all nations; although the doctrines they preached were resisted by all the influence of the several priesthoods, all the power of the several governments, all the passions, habits, and prejudices of the people, and all the wit and pride of the philosophers of all nations; although the age was such as insured to their fabrications the most intelligent examination, with the strongest possible disposition to detect them; although, in themselves, these infatuated men were directly the reverse of what such resistance demanded, and when they commenced were surrounded by circumstances of the most depressing kind, and by opposers specially exulting in the confidence of their destruction; although the mode they adopted was of all modes most calculated to expose' their own weakness and dishonesty, and to imbitter the enmity and increase the contempt of their opposers, so that they encountered everywhere the most tremendous persecutions, till torture and death were almost synonymous with the name of Christian; although they had nothing to propose, to Jew or Gentile, as a

matter of faith, but what the wisdom of the world ridiculed, and the vice of the world hated,- and all men were united in despising; although they had nothing earthly with which to tempt any one to receive their fabrication, except the necessity of an entire change in all his habits and dispositions, and an assurance that tribulations and persecutions must be his portion ; yet, when philosophers, with all their learning and rank and subtlety and veneration, could produce no effect on the public mind, these obscure Galileans obtained such influence throughout the whole extent of the Roman empire, and especially in the most enlightened cities, that in thirty years what they themselves (by the supposition) did not believe, they made hundreds of thousands of all classes, philosophers, senators, governors, priests, soldiers, as well as plebeians, believe and maintain unto death; yea, they planted this doctrine of their own invention so deeply, that all the persecutions of three hundred years could not root it up-they established the gospel so permanently, that in three hundred years it was the established religion of an empire coextensive with the known world, and continues still the religion of all civilized nations. This, says the unbeliever, they did simply by their own wit and industry; and yet he well knows that preachers of the gospel with incomparably more learning, with equal industry, in får greater numbers, and in circumstances immeasurably more propitious, have attempted to do something of the same kind among heathen nations, and could never even approximate to their success. Still