No sooner was Christianity professed by the rulers of the Roman empire, than idolatry, with every unnatural crime and cruel amusement, was abolished from society, or compelled to deny its existence. In proportion as this religion has reigned in any age or country, there has been a manifest increase of all the blessings of civilization, all the arts of peace, all the virtues of individual character, all the securities of a wise and equitable government. Nothing has retarded the growth of these benefits but what has alike retarded the progress of Christianity. No Christian people have suffered on account of any evil which Christianity has not directly opposed. Present efforts to spread this holy religion among the heathen demonstrate that her natural force is not abated, nor her influence changed. What she did among the pagans of the first century, she is accomplishing, though as yet by slower steps, among those of the nineteenth. Such has been from the beginning, such is now, and such, we have every reason to believe, ever will be the fruit of Christianity. By this she is known. By this let her claims to truth and a divine origin be judged. Every honest mind is capable of appreciating the evidence and of applying the law. It is a case by itself. No party appears to claim the credit of what Christianity ascribes to herself. Philosophy and the light of nature are joined to their idols and vices, and cannot come to the trial, and must therefore be excused. Infidelity was tried during the "reign of terror" in France, and received its sentence at the guillotine,

and therefore cannot come. Either the blessings we have described must be adjudged, according to the plea, to the gospel of Christ, or pronounced to be effects without a cause. Do they belong to the gospel, or to nothing? We speak the language of every conscience and of all common-sense when we say, the gospel alone produced them, and the gospel alone could produce them; and should the gospel be thoroughly conformed to in all the world, the whole world would be morally renovated, and all those physical evils which proceed from the vices of mankind would pass away.

"Can a cor

What then is Christianity? "Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" rupt tree bring forth good fruit?" This religion is either a truth or a fable; the revelation of God, or the wicked and blasphemous contrivance of man. If it be the work of human contrivance, it must be unspeakably offensive to God, inasmuch as it ascribes all its doctrines directly to his teaching, exalts its Founder to the dignity of the divine nature, calling him the Son of God, and making him equal to the Father in power and glory. Between its entire truth as a divine revelation, and its unparalleled audacity and impiety as a human imposture, there can be no middle ground. The unbeliever, in rejecting the former, must resort, if consistent, to the latter. Then let us see how much he is bound to believe in maintaining his position. He must believe that since the truth, according to his views, does not reside in Christianity, it does reside in some or all of the sys

tems of religion, or of philosophy, or of infidelity, to which Christianity is opposed. His creed, therefore, is substantially the following: "I believe that in proportion as the world has ever been committed to the influence of those antichristian systems among which the truth is to be found, it has been continually increasing in all moral degeneracy, having in it no spirit nor power of reformation. I believe, also, that in proportion as Christianity, which should be regarded only as a human contrivance of the grossest blasphemy and impiety, has reigned in the hearts and lives of men, the world has been morally renovated, society humanized, benevolence invigorated, personal and public happiness extended and purified. Consequently, I believe that a God infinitely wise, holy, and true, has so constituted mankind, that for the improvement and well-being of society we are under the necessity of believing and promoting what is not only false, but heinously offensive to himself; truth must be concealed because we learn by experience that its currency can only be accompanied with the greatest evils to the morals, the peace, the whole interest of mankind; teachers of error and darkness must be depended upon as instruments of human elevation, while teachers of the truth should be discountenanced as capable of nothing but the unhinging of the whole frame-work of private and public welfare." These, I say, are the articles of belief which, whether avowed or not, do lie wrapped up in the rejection of Christianity. The proof of this assertion is in the lecture we are now closing. I need not say

that it sets in strong and shining relief the truth of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, as a revelation from Him who is the giver of every good and perfect gift. For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. Where is the wise? 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. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."*

* 1 Corinthians, 1:18–24.

LECTURE XI.

THE FRUITS OF CHRISTIANITY-CONTINUED.

THE rule by which Christianity was tried in our last lecture, is as philosophical as it is scriptural. It is the rule of experiment, in distinction from all the whims of conjecture and ingenious theory, and has an application as legitimate and conclusive, to the character of Christianity, as to that of any tree, or food, or medicine. None can deny that the experiment of the religion of Christ has been varied sufficiently to put it to the fairest trial, and continued long enough to develope its most hidden qualities. Exposed to all extremes of physical and moral temperature, tried upon all descriptions of human beings, required to preserve its purity amidst all contagions, to display its energies under all conceivable burdens and bonds, to bear its fruit under the most blasting influences, and to stand against all possible combinations of enmity-sometimes subjected to the action of the fire, then of the rack, and then of the knife of unrelenting persecutors-eighteen hundred years have measured out its trial, during which, whatever could be effected by science united with industry, malice united with power, or vigilance united with hypocrisy, has been done unceasingly to torture it into a confession or a display of something at variance with a divine origin.