If he sets industriously and sincerely to perform the commands of Christ, he can have no ground of doubting but it shall prove successful to him. HAMMOND.

By ascending, after that the sharpness of death was overcome, he took the very local possession of glory, and that to the use of all that are his, even as himself before had witnessed, I go to prepare a place for you. HOOKER.

In the beautiful character of the blessed Jesus there was not a more striking feature than a certain sensibility which disposed him to take part in every one's affliction to which he was a witness, and to be ready to afford it a miraculous relief. He was apt to be particularly touched by instances of domestic distress, in which the suffering arises from those feelings of friendship growing out of natural affection and habitual endearment, which constitute the perfection of man as a social creature, and distinguish the society of the human kind from the instinctive herdings of the lower animals.

But

Logicians may reason about abstractions. the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle. The first inhabitants of Greece, there is reason to believe, worshipped one invisible Deity. But the necessity of having something more definite to adore produced, in a few centuries, the innumerable crowds of Gods and Goddesses. In like manner the ancient Persians thought it impious to exhibit the Creator under a human form. Yet even these transferred to the sun the worship which, in speculation, they considered due only to the Supreme Mind. The history of the Jews is the record of a continued struggle between pure Theism, supported by the most terrible sanctions, and the strangely fascinating desire of having some visible and tangible object of adoration. Perhaps none of the secondary causes which Gibbon has assigned for the rapidity with which Christianity spread over the world, while Judaism scarcely ever acquired a proselyte, operated more powerfully than this feeling. God, the uncreated, the incomprehensible, the invisible, attracted few worshippers. A philosopher might admire so noble a conception; but the crowd

turned away in disgust from words which presented no image to their minds. It was before Deity embodied in a human form, walking among men, partaking of their infirmities, leaning on their bosoms, weeping over their graves, that the prejudices of the Synagogue, and the slumbering in the manger, bleeding on the cross, doubts of the Academy, and the pride of the Portico, and the fasces of the Lictor, and the swords of thirty legions, were humbled in the dust. LORD MACAULAY: Milton, Aug. 1825.

The Saviour of mankind himself, in whose blameless life malice could find no act to impeach, had been called in question for words spoken. False witnesses had suppressed a syllable which would have made it clear that those words were figurative, and had thus furnished the Sanhedrim with a pretext under which the foulest of all judicial murders had been perpeLORD MACAULAY: trated.

History of England, chap. v.

Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy: He asks that for which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother: He asks for the human heart: He will have it entirely to himself: He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him experience that remarkable supernatural love towards Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative power. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame: time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This it is which strikes me most. I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

NAPOLEON I. :

I will confess that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers, with all their pomp of diction: how contemptible are they, compared with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and so sublime should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the sacred personage whose name it records should be himself a mere man? What sweetness, what purity, in his manner! What sublimity in his maxims! What profound wisdom in his discourses! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live and so die without weakness and without ostentation? If the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus were those of a God. J. J. ROUSSEAU.

The vast distance that sin hath put between the offending creature and the offended Creator required the help of some great umpire and intercessor to open him a new way of access to God; and this Christ did for us as mediator.

SOUTH.

The arguments brought by Christ for the confirmation of his doctrine were in themselves sufficient. SOUTH.

That spotless modesty of private and public life, that generous spirit which all other Christians ought to labour after, should look in us as if they were natural. SPRAT.

But however spirits of a superficial greatness may disdain at first sight to do anything, but from a noble impulse in themselves, without any future regards in this or any other being; upon stricter inquiry they will find, to act worthily, and expect to be rewarded only in another world, is as heroic a pitch of virtue as human nature can arrive at. If the tenor of our actions have any other motive than the desire to be pleasing in the eye of the Deity, it will necessarily follow that we must be more than men, if we are not too much exalted in prosperity and depressed in adversity. But the Christian world has a Leader, the contemplation of whose life and sufferings must administer comfort in affliction, while the sense of his power and omnipotence must give them humiliation in prosperity.

SIR R. STEELE: Spectator, No. 356. Christ gave us his spirit to enable us to suffer injuries, and made that the parts of suffering evils should be the matter of three or four Christian graces,-of patience, of fortitude, of longanimity, and perseverance.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

The great received articles of the Christian religion have been so clearly proved, from the authority of that divine revelation in which they have ears to hear, and eyes to see, not to be are delivered, that it is impossible for those who

convinced of them.

But were it possible for I can find no ill consequences in adhering to it. anything in the Christian faith to be erroneous, The great points of the incarnation and sufferings of our Saviour produce naturally such habits of virtue in the mind of man, that, I say, in them, the infidel himself must at least allow supposing it were possible for us to be mistaken that no other system of religion could so effectually contribute to the heightening morality. They give us great ideas of the dignity of human nature, and of the love which the Supreme Being bears to his creatures, and consequently engage us in the highest acts of duty towards our Creator, our neighbour, and ourselves.

ADDISON: Spectator, No. 186.

It can never be for the interest of a believer to do me a mischief, because he is sure, upon the balance of accounts, to find himself a loser by it. ADDISON.

The pre-eminence of Christianity to any other religious scheme which preceded it, appears from this, that the most eminent among the pagan philosophers disclaimed many of those superstitious follies which are condemned by revealed religion. ADDISON.

When religion was woven into the civil government, and flourished under the protection of the emperors, men's thoughts and discourses were full of secular affairs; but in the three first centuries of Christianity men who embraced this religion had given up all their interests in this world, and lived in a perpetual preparation for the next. ADDISON.

It happened, very providentially, to the honour of the Christian religion, that it did not take its rise in the dark illiterate ages of the world, but at a time when arts and sciences were at their height. ADDISON.

A few persons of an odious and despised country could not have filled the world with believers, had they not shown undoubted credentials from the divine person who sent them on such a message. ADDISON.

Such arguments had an invincible force of those Pagan philosophers who became Christians, as we find in most of their writings.

Addison.

Arnobius asserts that men of the finest parts and learning,—rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians, -despising the sentiments they had once been fond of, took up their rest in the Christian religion. ADDISON.

There was never law, or sect, or opinion, did so much magnify goodness as the Christian religion doth. LORD BACON :

Essay XIII., Of Goodness, etc. The countries of the Turk were once Christian, and members of the Church, and where the golden candlesticks did stand; though now they be utterly alienated, and no Christian left. LORD BACON.

No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good. LORD BOLINGBROKE.

But the introduction of Christianity, which, under whatever form, always confers such inestimable benefits on mankind, soon made a sensible change in these rude and fierce manIt is by no means impossible, that, for an end so worthy, Providence on some occasions might directly have interposed.

ners.

BURKE: Abridgment of Eng. History.

That the Christian religion cannot exist in this country with such a fraternity will not, I think, he disputed with me. On that religion, according to our mode, all our laws and institutions stand, as upon their base. That scheme is supposed in every transaction of life; and if that were done away, everything else, as in France, must be changed along with it. Thus, religion perishing, and with it this Constitution, it is a matter of endless meditation what order of things

would follow it.

BURKE.

What was it to the Pharaohs of Egypt of that old era, if Jethro the Midianite priest and grazier accepted the Hebrew outlaw as his herdsman? Yet the Pharaohs, with all their chariots of war, are buried deep in the wrecks of time; and that Moses still lives, not among his own

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tribe only, but in the hearts and daily business of all civilized nations. Or figure Mahomet in his youthful years" travelling to the horse-fairs of Syria." Nay, to take an infinitely higher instance: who has ever forgotten those lines of Tacitus; inserted as a small transitory altogether trifling circumstance in the history of such a potentate as Nero? To us it is the most earnest and strongly significant passage that we know to exist in writing: Ergo abolendo rumori, Nero subdidit reos, et quæsitissimis pœnis affecit, quos per flagitia invisos, vulgus Christianos appellabat. Auctor nominis ejus CHRISTUS, qui, Tiberio imperitante, per Procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio affectus erat. Repressaque in præsens exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat, non modo per Judæam originem ejus mali, sed pudenda confluunt celebranturque.' So for the per urbem etiam quo cuncta undique atrocia aut quieting of this rumour [of his having set fire to Rome], Nero judicially charged with the crime and punished with the most studied severities that class hated for their general wickedness whom the vulgar call Christians. The originator of that name was one CHRIST, who in the reign of Tiberius suffered death by the sentence superstition, thereby suppressed for the time, again broke out not only over Judea, the native soil of that mischief, but in the City also, where from every side all atrocious and abominable things collect and flourish." Tacitus was the wisest, most penetrating man of his generation; and to such depth, and no deeper, has he seen | into this transaction, the most important that has occurred or can occur in the annals of mankind. CARLYLE.

of the Procurator Pontius Pilate. The baneful

might have

Had it been published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer the world to the cross, been thought an illusion against all the reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accomplished by them. They published this doctrine in Jerusalem, and quickly spread it over the greatest part of the world. Folly outwitted wisdom, and weakness_overpowered strength. The conquest of the East by Alexander was not so admirable as the enterprise of these poor men. CHARNOCK: Attributes.

Christianity, which is always true to the heart, knows no abstract virtues, but virtues resulting from our wants, and useful to all.

CHATEAUBRIAND.

I have known what the enjoyments and advantages of this life are, and what the more power can bestow; and with all the experience refined pleasures which learning and intellectual that more than threescore years can give, I, now on the eve of my departure, declare to you (and earnestly pray that you may hereafter live and act on the conviction) that health is a great blessing, competence obtained by honourable industry a great blessing-and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and loving friends

Far beyond all other political powers of Christianity is the demiurgic power of this religion over the kingdoms of human opinion. DE QUINCEY.

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts, the cradle of its infancy and the divine source of its claims.

DE TOCQUEVILLE. The mysterious incarnation of our blessed Saviour... Milton made the grand conclusion of Paradise Lost, the zest of his finished labours, and the ultimate hope, expectation, and glory of the world. Thus you find all that is great or wise or splendid or illustrious among created beings, all the minds gifted beyond ordinary nature, if not inspired by their universal Author for the advancement and dignity of the world, though divided by distant ages and by clashing opinions, yet joining as it were in one sublime chorus to celebrate the truths of Christianity, and laying upon its holy altars the neverfading offerings of their immortal wisdom.

LORD CHANCELLOR ERSKINE: Speech on Paine's Age of Reason. The universal dispersion of the Jews throughout the world, their unexampled sufferings, and their wondrous preservation, would be sufficient to establish the truth of the Scriptures, if all other testimony were sunk to the bottom of the

to diminish its force and authority over the consciences of men. It is dogmatic; not capable of being advanced with the progress of science, but fixed and immutable.

ROBERT HALL:

Sentiments Proper to the Present Crisis. Whoever will compare the late defences of Christianity by Locke, Butler, or Clarke with those of the ancient apologists, will discern in the former far more precision and an abler method of reasoning than in the latter; which must be attributed chiefly to the superior spirit of inquiry by which modern times are distinguished. Whatever alarm then may have been taken at the liberty of discussion, religion it is plain hath been a gainer by it; its abuses corrected, and its divine authority settled on a firmer basis than ROBERT HALL:

ever.

On the Right of Public Discussion.

The prime act and evidence of the Christian hope is to set industriously and piously to the performance of that condition on which the promise is made. HAMMOND.

Her coming [Christianity] found the heathen world without a single house of mercy. Search the Byzantine Chronicles and the pages of Publius Victor; and though the one describes all the public edifices of ancient Constantinople, and the other of ancient Rome, not a word is to be found in either of a charitable institution. Search the ancient marbles in your museums; descend and ransack the graves of Herculaneum and Pompeii; and question the many travellers who have visited the ruined cities of Greece and Rome; and see, if amid all the splendid re

Letters on the Christian Religion.

Now you say, alas! Christianity is hard: I grant it; but gainful and happy. I contemn the difficulty when I respect the advantage. The greatest labours that have answerable requitals are less than the least that have no reward. Believe me, when I look to the reward I would not have the work easier. It is a good Master whom we serve, who not only pays, but gives; not only after the proportion of our earn ings, but of His own mercy.

BISHOP J. HALL.

Christianity, issuing perfect and entire from the hands of its Author, will admit of no mutilations nor improvements; it stands most secure on its own basis; and without being indebted to foreign aids, supports itself best by its own internal vigour. When, under the pretence of simplifying it, we attempt to force it into a closer alliance with the most approved systems of phi

granaries, temples, aqueducts and palaces, mausoleums, columns and triumphal arches, a single fragment or inscription can be found telling us that it belonged to a refuge for human want or for the alleviation of human misery.

DR. JOHN HARRIS: Great Commission. There are two kinds of Christian righteousness; the one without us, which we have by imputation; the other in us, which consisteth of faith, hope, and charity, and other Christian virtues. HOOKER.

Christianity did not come from heaven to be the amusement of an idle hour, to be the food of mere imagination; to be as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and playeth well upon an instrument. No: it is intended to be the guide, the guardian, the companion of all hours; it is intended to be the food of our immortal spirits; it is intended to be the serious occupation of our whole existBISHOP JEBB.

ence.

The miracles which prove the Christian religion are attested by men who have no interest in deceiving us. When we take the prophecies which have been so exactly fulfilled, we have most satisfactory evidence.

DR. S. JOHNSON: Croker's Boswell, ch. xvi.

The real security of Christianity is to be found

The influence of Christianity has been very efficient toward the introduction of a better and more enlightened sense of right and justice among the several governments of Europe. It taught the duty of benevolence to strangers, of humanity to the vanquished, of the obligation of good faith,-of the sin of murder, revenge, and rapacity. The history of Europe during the earlier periods of modern history abounds with interesting and strong cases to show the authority of the Church over turbulent princes and fierce warriors, and the effect of that authority in meliorating manners, checking violence, and introducing a system of morals which inculcated peace, moderation, and justice..

The "greatest happiness principle" of Mr. Bentham is included in the Christian morality, and, to our thinking, it is there exhibited in an infinitely more sound and philosophical form than in the Utilitarian speculations. For in the New Testament it is neither an identical proposition nor a contradiction in terms; and, as laid down by Mr. Bentham, it must be either the one or the other. "Do as you would be done by: Love your neighbour as yourself:" these are the precepts of Jesus Christ. Understood in an enlarged sense, these precepts are, in fact, a direction to every man to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But this direction would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr. Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In the Christian scheme, accordingly, it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.

LORD MACAULAY: Westminster Review's Defence of Mill, June, 1829.

tation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave. To such a system it can bring no addition of dignity or of strength, that it is part and parcel of the common law. It is not now for the first time left to rely on the force of its own evidences and the attractions of its own beauty. Its sublime theology confounded the Grecian schools in the fair conflict of reason with reason. The bravest and wisest of the Cæsars found their arms and their policy unavailing, when opposed to the weapons that were not carnal, and the kingdom that was not of this world. The victory which Porphyry and Diocletian failed to gain is not, to all appearance, reserved for any of those who have, in this age, directed their attacks against the last restraint of the powerful, and the last hope of the wretched. The whole history of Christianity shows that she is in far greater danger of being corrupted by the alliance of power, than of being crushed by its opposition. Those who thrust temporal sovereignty upon her treat her as their prototypes treated her author. They bow the knee, and spit upon her; they cry Hail!" and smite her on the cheek; they put a sceptre in her hand, but it is a fragile reed; they crown her, but it is with thorns; they cover with purple the wounds which their own hands have inflicted on her; and inscribe magnificent letters over the cross on which they have fixed her to perish in ignominy and pain.

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LORD MACAULAY:

Southey's Colloquies on Society, Jan. 1830.

One single expression which Mr. Sadler employs on this subject is sufficient to show how utterly incompetent he is to discuss it. "On the Christian hypothesis," says he, "no doubt exists as to the origin of evil." He does not, we think, understand what is meant by the origin of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no solution of the mystery. They relate facts; but they leave the metaphysical question undetermined. They tell us that man fell; but why he was not so constituted as to be incapable of falling, or why the Supreme Being has not mitigated the consequences of the Fall more than they actually have been mitigated, the Scriptures did not tell us, and, it may without presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures different from what we are. There is something, either in the nature of our faculties or in the nature of the machinery employed by us for the purpose of reasoning, which condemns us on this and similar subjects to hopeless ignorance. Man can understand these high matters only by ceasing to be man, just as a fly can understand a lemma of Newton only by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an objection to the Christian system that it gives us no solution of these difficulties is to make it an