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culated to produce-what defect of character each trial is peculiarly fitted to correct;-thus will this world become indeed a state of probation, and of happy preparation for that glorious kingdom of perfect bliss, which is prepared for the faithful followers of our Lord. But alas! man is lynx-eyed to discover the frailties of his fellow-creatures, but is too often blind to his own sins; he can calmly sit in judgment on the events that befal others, and pronounce them admirably calculated to produce reformation, but turns a deaf ear to the still small voice which whispers, that were he to look within, as apparent are the designs of Providence in the appointments of his lot. Let Christians beware of thus reducing to a nullity, the merciful chastisements of their Heavenly Father; let each endeavour to improve the passing events of life; and while on earth, let not the fleeting things of time be more valued than they deserve; but under every event, let trust in God be the ruling principle of life-the endeavour to prepare for heaven, the first great object of existence.

M.

Remarks on Paine's Age of Reason, in a series of Letters addressed to the Readers of the Christian Pioneer.

(Letter III. concluded from p. 378.)

THE hardiest sceptic will not deny, that Christianity is now in the world, and in the midst of ourselves. As clear as that it exists, is it that it must have had a commencement and an author. Both are assigned by Christians. Can any better account be given? If not, what remains but to receive that which is current? Has any better account been given? If time were needed to elicit the truth, eighteen centuries are long enough to bring it to light. If you would prefer the declarations of unbelievers, who lived near the age when it is said to have taken its rise, they confirm and not impeach the great facts of Christianity, while they interpret these facts so as to show their prejudice in attempting to uphold their own incredulity. I ask modern enlightenment for another account of the origin of Christianity. I go to the unbeliever, and find him busy in his investigations, and full of ingenuity, with an eye as keen as it is narrow, and bid him tell me what his discoveries are. If a man of information and integrity, he will confess he has laboured in

vain; but if one who gains a wretched and precarious subsistence by hostility, in which neither honour nor honesty has any influence, against long-cherished convictions and existing institutions, he will endeavour to palm on me a few baseless and incoherent conjectures, for the voice of history and the disclosures of philosophy. Leaving him in disgust, I ascend to past ages, and when I have got fairly back into the period of general darkness, I find here and there a witness, the evidence of whose subornation and perjury is found, in the false pretence to an age eleven centuries prior to his real birth, and in the atrocious calumnies which desperation impels him to utter. No other account can be found of the origin of what we see, which has the slightest pretensions to historical truth, or rational probability. Reject what Christians offer, and you are launched on a sea without rudder or compass. It is not a conflict of probabilities-it is not a competition between two guides. The alternative is, ours or none; the effect with the cause we assign, or no cause at all; a link but no chain, or a suspended chain with no point of support, or a stream without a source.

But this stream we can trace upwards to its fountainhead, by marks which admit not of doubt or uncertainty.

You have all heard of the battles of the Cross against the Crescent, when the Western was precipitated in hostile array on the Eastern world, and the holy land suffered a greater indignity than Turk or Mussulman could inflict upon it, by being watered with blood and filled with wailing. Christianity, then, existed in the eleventh century. The very corruptions which enabled Mahomet to effect the establishment of his warrior-faith, in its stead and on its ruins, over many parts where Christianity had once flourished in beauty and power, and the declarations of Mahomet himself, by which he acknowledged Christ and professed his object to be to perfect Christianityattest its existence in the eighth century. In the fourth, the Emperor Constantine made it the religion of the civilized world, by making it the favoured religion of his imperial court. How, in less than four centuries, could a new and bitterly-opposed faith have so prospered, as to take its seat in the empire of the world, and gather around its throne the rich, the great, the learned, in all the pomp of the gorgeous East? The establishment of Christianity in the days of Constantine, is of itself sufficient to carry

back our faith to the time when our books assert it took its origin, and, I might add, to prove that its claims to acceptance were powerful, if not accompanied with miraculous attestations.

In the second century, Christianity was assailed by a learned and bitter enemy, in the person of Celsus a Jew, fragments of whose attack have come down to the present day. From these, not only the existence of Christianity, and its origination from Christ at a period not long prior to his own time, may be learned, but also many of the facts of the Gospel and many of its precepts; especially, that pretensions were made to miraculous powers, and hopes entertained of a resurrection from the dead, in consequence of that of Jesus. In fact, did no other early document exist, we could, from the opinions he ascribes to Christians, and the historical notices which show themselves incidentally in his work, infer that the great features of Christianity were in the second century, and had been in the first, the same as they are now. In the very commencement of the second century, Pliny the Younger, a man of high rank and station, had—in the exercise of the government of a part of Asia Minor, devolved upon him by the Roman Emperor-occasion to consult his imperial master, as to the course he should pursue towards the Christians; and in the letter which he wrote with this view, we learn, that then, A. D. 106, Christianity had spread from Judea to Asia, made converts among persons of all ranks and all ages, to such an extent, that the temples of the gods were deserted, and the craft and even the subsistence of the priests endangered; that its professors were attached by religious devotement to Christ, and could be moved neither by persuasion nor the severest punishment, to renounce their faith; that their characters and lives were without a stain, and their principles utterly opposed to wickedness. We may go back yet nearer to the time, when our own accounts fix the origin of Christianity, under the guidance of heathens, that is, of unbelievers and enemies. The Roman historian, Suetonius, besides several indirect but manifest allusions to Christ and Christianity, informs us, in his life of the Emperor Nero, whose reign began in 54 A.D. and ended 68 A.D. that "the Christians were punished, a sort of men of a new and magical superstition;" new, he terms it, in agreement with the Testament, for then it had existed only

half a century; "magical," in obvious allusion to the supernatural attestations by which we assert that it was attended. In writing the life of the Emperor Claudius, he lets us know, that ten years earlier than the last datethat is, about the year 40 of the Christian era, and not ten years after the death of Christ-Christians were found at Rome, and, under the influence of the spirit of persecution to which, whatever unbelievers may say, the Roman nation was shamefully addicted, were banished from the city. No authority can be more weighty among all the historians of ancient or modern times, than that of Tacitus; and from his testimony, which comes within the first century, divers facts of the evangelical history are declared and attested:-that Jesus Christ was put to death as a malefactor, by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, under Tiberius, which fixes the time of its origination to the very period assigned by our books; that from Christ, the people called Christians took their name and sentiments; that this religion, or as he calls it, superstition, had its rise in Judea, where also it spread, notwithstanding the ignominious death of its founder, and the opposition which his followers met with from the people of that country afterwards; that thence it was propagated into other parts of the world, and as far as Rome, when in the tenth year of Nero's reign, that is, A. D. 64, and indeed before, Christians were numerous; and that the professors of this faith, were reproached and hated and persecuted, to such an extent, as to excite the compassion even of the heathen historian himself.

We have thus traced up the history of Christianity to the very century, not to say year of its origin. We have taken no facts but such as are unimpeachable, which must be true, or the leading facts of history are false; and which unbelievers themselves have supplied or admitted. The time of its origin, is fixed beyond the possibility of a doubt, in the reign of Tiberius, and in the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, that is, when Jesus began to be about "thirty” years of age. Up to this time from the present, monuments of its existence present themselves, countless in number, and of a character most decisive. Before this

time, no vestige of Christianity can be found. This, then, is the fountain-head. If we go farther into antiquity, we can find no trace of the Gospel, except, indeed, in the ordinations of God, and the mystic forms of the ancient

prophets, casting before them the shadows of coming events. If we track the river down from this point, we have a thousand voices to herald us onward till the present hour.

But the evidence of the witnesses we have called, is not limited to defining the time when our faith took its rise. Jesus, they say, was its author; Judea its birthplace; the civilized world, the field of its early triumphs; regenerated hearts, and heathenism tottering on its base, the rewards it reaped within one century; its hopes and promises, the crown of eternal life; its evidence, miraculous; its most astounding declaration, resurrection of the dead, in imitation of the alleged resurrection of its great author; its moral tone, pure; its moral precepts, lofty; love for its spirit; and self-denial even unto death, the practice of its followers. Here are the great outlines of Christianity drawn by no friendly hand. You see in them much of what you hold most dear, fellow-Christians. You see in them the principles and truths which foster the excellence you aspire to reach, and encourage the expectations you rejoice to entertain. Christianity is mainly a religion of facts, and for its establishment, we may be content to leave our sacred books, and go to the pages on which, even the enmity of infidelity has written the records of our faith and the charter of our hopes. Far indeed was it from the intention of a Tacitus, a Celsus, or a Gibbon, to furnish Christianity with armour from the armoury of unbelief; but they have, in fact, clothed her in a panoply which cannot be pierced. Let our own records perish; we fly to the pages of profane history, and then we point and say, there the sceptical may find evidence to determine his wavering mind, and there the Christian may find the basis of all his hopes. G. C. S.

Dr. Chalmers' Illustrations of Theology.-No. 2.

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Most curious it is to observe, that Dr. Chalmers' illustrations generally stand inflexibly opposed to the doctrines which he has summoned them up to support. True it is, that the Doctor holds a magic wand, with which he can bring trooping into his closet, tropes and figures from every nook of creation. But though they come at his bidding, they obstinately persist in being themselves, and

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