the Pharisee! Think, I beseech you, seriously of these things. Think of the serious mischief you are doing to the doctrines of our blessed Saviour; and learn by times to combine with a strict obedience to the will of God, that profound humility and that gracious indulgence which show your religion to be genuine and amiable; always remembering that the multitude judge of religion as much by your lives as they do by our doctrine.

SERMON XI.

ON THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.

ROMANS, vi. 23.

The gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I PROPOSE in this discourse to enter into some general observations upon the truth of the Gospel history, omitting minute points of evidence, and endeavouring only to place before the eyes of this congregation the prominent considerations which influence studious and reflecting persons to believe in the truth of Christianity.

The truth of Christianity depends upon its leading facts alone, and of these we have such evidence as ought to satisfy us till it appears mankind have ever been deceived by proofs as numerous and as strong. We have some uncontested and incontestable points to which the history of man has nothing similar to offer. A Jewish peasant changed the religion of the world; did it without force, without power, without support, without one natural source or circumstance of attraction, influence, or success. After he had been put to death, the companions of this person asserted his supernatural character, founded upon his supernatural operations; and to show that what they asserted was true, they voluntarily entered upon lives of toil and hardship, and committed themselves to the last extremities of persecution; more particularly a very few days after this person had been publicly executed, and in the very city where he had been buried, his companions with one voice declared

that he was restored to life, that they had seen him, touched him, and conversed with him. They then directly preached his religion before the face of those, who, having crucified Christ, had the same power and the same inclination to destroy them; and having done this on the very spot where Pilate judged and Jesus died, they went through derision, insult, and outrage, to preach the Gospel throughout the whole world. The Christian story as to these points has never varied; no other hath ever been set up against it; every letter, every discourse, every controversy among the followers of the religion, every book written by them from the age of its commencement to the present time, every sect in every part of the world which professes it, all concur in representing these facts in this manner; a religion which now possesses the greatest part of the civilised world unquestionably sprang up in Jerusalem at this time. Some account must be given of its origin, and some cause assigned for its rise. Now all the accounts of this origin, all the explanations of this cause, whether taken from the writings of the early Christians, or from occasional notices of Christianity in that and the next age, either expressly state this to have been the method in which the Christian religion began, or they advert to its commencement in a manner which shows all these facts to be true, and which bears witness to their extraordinary effects. These propositions alone would be sufficient to lay a foundation for our faith, for they prove the existence of a transaction which even in its most general parts cannot be accounted for in any reasonable way, but by supposing the truth of our Saviour's mission; the detail, however, of the miracles upon which this unexampled transaction rested, it is of the greatest importance we should know. This account we have from men who saw them or from their companions; not in one book, but in four books, each containing enough for the verification of the religion, and all

agreeing in the fundamental parts of the history. The authenticity of these books is established by more and stronger proofs, than belong to almost any other antient book whatever, and by proofs which widely distinguish them from any others claiming a similar authority to theirs. If there were any good reason to doubt concerning the names to which these books are ascribed (which there is not, for they were never ascribed to any other), their antiquity, of which there is no question, and their authority among the early Christians, of which there is as little, prove strongly that they must in the main, agree with what the first teachers of religion delivered.

When we open these antient books we discover in them genuine marks of truth, whether considered separately, or compared with each other. The writers were certainly well acquainted with their subject, for they evince a knowledge of local circumstances, of the history and of the usages of those times which could only belong to an inhabitant of that country, living in that age. When we compare the different Gospels together, we find them so varying as to repel all suspicion of confederacy; so agreeing as to show that all the accounts had one real transaction for their common foundation, often attributing different actions or discourses to the persons whose history they propose to relate, yet actions and discourses so similar that they evidently bespeak the same character; a coincidence (in such writers as they were), which can only be explained by supposing them to have written from fact, and not from imagination. These four narratives are confined to the history of the founder of the religion, and end with his ministry, but these are not enough; as the great business of Christianity went on, it is necessary we should know how it proceeded. This intelligence has come down to us in a book purporting to be written by a person who was himself connected with the first stages of the progress

of Christianity, taking up the history where the former historians had left it, carrying on the narrative with minuteness, and throughout with the air of information, good sense, and candour; stating all along the only probable origin of effects which unquestionably were produced, and the natural consequences of such actions which unquestionably did exist; and this is confirmed by original epistles, written by the principal person in the history, upon the business to which the history relates, and soon after the period which the history comprises. All these things are true, and no man can say that all these things do not constitute a strong body of historical evidence. In viewing the details of miracles. recorded in these books, we find every supposition negatived by which they can be resolved into fraud or delusion; they were not secret, they were not momentary, they were not ambiguous, they were not performed under the sanction of authority, or in affirmance of tenets and practices already established; on the contrary, they were performed before multitudes, they remained for a long time subject to examination and inquiry, as when Lazarus was raised from the dead. There could be no doubt that they were miracles, as when the sick man took up his bed and walked. Jesus performed them all from his own will, and he performed them often at the very moment when he was inveighing against the imperfections of the Jewish law, and the vices and superstitions of the Jews. The evidence for these miracles was contemporary; it was published on the spot; it continued; it involved questions and interests of the greatest magnitude; it required from those who accepted it, not an indolent assent to the miracles, but it contradicted all their fixed persuasions and firm prejudices; it compelled them to search and to inquire into the truth; it required of the converts to the Christian faith, a change of conduct and of principles, submission to consequences the most serious and the most deterring,-to loss and danger,