that this pretence would avail them, or not, exactly according to its agreement or disagreement with positive facts. We can easily conceive fanatic persons claiming credit for a power of working miracles, to whom no such power belonged; but we cannot conceive such persons being generally attended to and credited, unless their claim were supported by facts too plain to be denied. If no supernatural power accompanied them, the pretence to it would only sink them lower in public estimation; instead of deluded enthusiasts, they would be treated as designing impostors ; and the idea of their establishing a new religion on the ruins of the old would become more visionary than ever. In a very few days the attempt itself, and the party which had undertaken it, would be numbered among things forgotten. Give them rank; give them authority; give them education; let no external advantages be wanting; still the barrier opposed by national belief, prescriptive customs, and personal habits, is so strong, that it has never been overcome without some commensurate power, civil or military. Whoever will look into the subject so steadily, as to propose to his mind an attempt like that under consideration, will perceive that I have not exaggerated its difficulties. Yet these difficulties were encountered by the Apostles. I have supposed nothing greater than they attempted; nothing greater than

they achieved; and not in a single city, but over half the world; the same scheme which we at once declare to be impracticable as to our own age or country, was tried within the first century throughout the most civilized parts of the world then known, and succeeded.

The account

Let us inquire how it succeeded. which is borne on the face of the history relates, that at an annual feast at Jerusalem, the attention of certain Jews who had resorted thither from many different countries for the purpose of national worship, was attracted by a party of Galileans, who addressed the multitude in their respective languages. We can form some idea of the nature of such an occurrence, by figuring to ourselves a Jewish assembly in any of the European capitals, where Jews of every country are assembled; and supposing twelve persons of the same persuasion, who were known never to have travelled, to begin a comment upon the Hebrew Scriptures, in the different languages of Europe.

During the inquiry which this circumstance excited, one of these, named Peter, who had been a fisherman in his native province, Galilee, undertook to explain the subject of the general astonishment by referring to a passage in their prophets, whose authority all acknowledged; and which contained a promise of interposition like that which the assembly

was now witnessing. And he proceeded to this effect, declaring the purpose of the present miracle.1

Hear my explanation of this visible interposition of Almighty power. Ye, the men of Israel, have crucified Jesus of Nazareth; to whose divine mission God bore witness by the miracles which he enabled him to perform in the sight of you all. God, however, has raised him from the dead, as your great prophet David foretold concerning him, in a passage with which you are familiar; but which, you must be aware, cannot apply to David, whose death and burial are undisputed: but which does, in truth, foretell the resurrection of that expected Messiah whom God had promised from the race of David. We here stand up and testify, that Jesus has risen again, according to the prophecy; and that he has -shed forth upon us his disciples the Holy Spirit, the effects of which ye now see and hear. "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.”

This was the first public declaration of the divinity or Messiahship of Jesus, after his death; and was so convincing to the hearers, that three thousand from that moment made open confession of their belief, and were added to the existing body of his disciples.

1 See Acts ii. 14, &c.

Now there must surely have been something very insuperable in the proofs presented to the minds of this assembly, when so large a number pleaded guilty to the charge of having been accessary to the execution of one whom they ought to have recognized as bearing a divine commission by the works which he performed; and even agreed to embrace a religion preached in his name, as the only remaining condition of pardon. They must have been impressed with a very strong conviction, before they consented to acknowledge him as the Son of God, who not two months before had suffered the death of a malefactor. There is no time when men are less likely, without overpowering testimony, to acknowledge a fact, than when it proves themselves guilty. Nor was there any imaginable reason for their making this concession, except the conviction of their understandings and their consciences. There was nothing said to excite their passions, nothing to alarm their fears, nothing to raise their hopes, unless it derived force from undeniable facts. There was no proof that Jesus had been sent from God, unless, as Peter asserts, he had been really "approved of God among them" by miraculous deeds. There was no weight in the prophecy adduced, and which they had not been accustomed to apply to the expected Messiah, except what it might obtain from the fact affirmed, the resurrection of Jesus. There was no proof of his exercising super

natural power now, more than when he suffered on the cross, unless that power were actually witnessed in the gifts conferred on the Apostles. Was there no one in that numerous assembly who could refute the unexpected interpretation of an ancient prophecy given by an uneducated Galilean? No plain man of common sense, who could say, we heard of no "wonders, or signs, or mighty deeds"? No one who could account, in any ordinary way, for the use of various languages? Peter's speech depended for success entirely on the coincidence of actual fact with his arguments: here was nothing refined, nothing far-fetched, nothing to perplex the understanding of reasonable men; but his words came home to their consciences; and instead of putting down the Apostles with the hand of power as disturbers of a solemn assembly, they appeal to them as men and brethren, eagerly inquiring how they might atone for the crime in which they had been concerned. Yet it does not appear to have been one of those simultaneous impressions, which sometimes hurry away a multitude without reflection or in spite of reason. The historian does not say, that the conviction was unanimous. "They that gladly received his word were baptized:" which implies that some resisted arguments which proved effectual with the majority of that assembly.

Shortly after, this scene was repeated on a similar