not discern the truth; and though he had become too well instructed to think such prejudice innocent, he attributes it to this cause, that God had mercifully pardoned and enlightened him.

We must not, at any rate, allow an objection to divert our minds from the undisputed fact, that a considerable body of the Jewish nation was persuaded to exchange the religion to which they had been attached with proverbial zeal, for a religion which opposed all their sentiments, disappointed all their expectations, and compromised all their exclusive privileges. Now, from our experience of the human mind, we can in some measure understand how a part of the nation might obstinately resist evidence which convinced the rest: but on no experience whatever can we understand how a single individual should have been converted, without that very evidence to which their conversion is ascribed in the history. And the result of the whole is, that, in the account which we have received of the first propagation of Christianity, there is nothing inconsistent with what we know of the human heart, its prejudices, associations, and tendencies;-supposing that the facts were true; supposing that such a person as Jesus had been really foretold by a series of prophets; supposing that he had indeed risen from the dead; and supposing that the miracles appealed to had been actually performed. On any

other supposition the whole case becomes altogether inexplicable, and the progress of the religion a problem without parallel in the history of mankind.

CHAPTER XI.

MORAL CHANGE EFFECTED BY CHRISTIANITY.

It has been urged in the preceding chapter, that the history contained in the book of the Acts of the Apostles gives a probable account of the promulgation of Christianity.

Such a report, without doubt, comes attended by suspicion. The report of those whose veracity is the very matter in question, cannot be received without scruple. But whether we receive their account or not, here is a tangible and acknowledged fact, of which some explanation must be given. There is an edifice existing before our eyes. We may disbelieve the current records of its foundation, but it must have had some builder; and there is no philosophy in refusing to admit the alleged history of its erection, unless we can supply another, which is better authenticated or more probable.

This edifice is Christianity. The witnesses to its foundation are the Christians, who, eighteen centuries ago, appeared in the world. If these did not become Christians through indisputable evidence of

the divine origin of their religion, how did they become so? What was the occasion of that extraordinary change, that moral revolution, which took place, when the native of Asia, or Greece, or Italy, confessed himself a Christian?

We

What the morals of the world were, at the period when Christianity was first preached, we know from unquestionable authority. We know that the only divine worship practised at all was idolatrous worship; and that this idolatrous worship was commonly attended with profligacy of the most debasing kind, and often with heinous cruelty. know that no restraint was laid upon the evil passions of our nature, except by public laws and public opinion. But public laws never did or can extend to many of the worst vices; and public opinion, judging from experience, in order that it may become an efficient corrective of vicious passions, requires a higher standard of reference than human nature ever supplied. I have no desire to disparage the characters of those who used to the best purpose the light which they possessed, and exalted the age in which they lived by noble exhibitions of temperance, probity, disinterestedness, or fortitude. Nor have I any wish to derogate from the honour of those philosophers who employed their reason to its noblest purpose; and, in some instances, endeavoured to raise their followers above the dominion of selfish appetite or worldly ambition. It is enough

to know, as we do know, what the Asiatic, and Greek, and Roman world was, in spite of individual exceptions, and in defiance of the exertions of philosophy. Wickedness, indeed, will take the same course, and bear in many points the same aspect in every age. But with the heathen world, taken collectively, habits of life were allowed and uncensured, which we are accustomed to consider as proof that the restraints are thrown aside by which the rest of the community is bound. Even their moralists appear as libertines, when tried by the standard of the Gospel. Nor did the world give any signs of melioration, or progressive improvement. In all those points which form the real distinction between vice and virtue, Athens and Lacedæmon were no better than Sardis or Babylon; and imperial Rome had no superiority over the Grecian democracies which it supplanted. Thales, Pythagoras, Solon, Socrates, Cicero, had effected no general change, either in the theory of religion or the practice of morals.

On a sudden, in the midst of idolatry, or of utter carelessness as to all religion, and in the midst of selfish gratifications and sensual indulgences with which they were still on every side surrounded,

1On this subject it is sufficient to refer to Leland's excellent work, on the "Advantage of Revelation;" and to Macknight's "Truth of the Gospel History." Cicero, Orat. pro Cælio, c. 20; Epictet. Enchirid. c. 47; Porphyry (ap. Cyrill. contr. Julian. i. 6. p. 186); abundantly justify the remark in the text.