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Christianity. Now what but their value should have led to their preservation? What but its value preserves any work from oblivion? A manuscript is not a temple, nor a mountain, to withstand the ravages of time. Few things are of a more perishable nature. Why have the poems of Homer been transmitted to the present day? Would men take any account of that which they judged worthless? The Gospels, then, have come down to us because men set a high estimate on their contents. But how could they have formed such an estimate, unless they had reason to believe in the substantial truth of their narrations? It is altogether a mistake to suppose that they were the fabrication of priests, or that they were at the first under the special care of a priesthood. This may have been the case with the sacred books of other nations; it is not the case with the Christian histories. Their writers, as well as the distinguished personage of whom they write, were the moral and spiritual reformers of their day, and the books were universally received by poor and uneducated Christians long before they came into the keeping of a clergy. How could these poor and uneducated people have been led at first to receive them as of authority, and to transmit them from father to son, except they had been satisfied that they really were what they professed to be? Consider them as fabrications, and you have the miracle to account for, that men and women in all parts of the civilised world, agreed from the first, and in subsequent ages, to receive and preserve with pious care, that of whose trustworthiness they knew nothing. Spurious narratives did indeed exist; but their spuriousness was known, their authority disallowed. The tares were separated from the wheat, and that, too, not by any clerical decision, but by the general voice of believers. The ground of their condemnation was that they were not generally received. They fell into neglect and soon passed into an almost total oblivion, because they wanted the sanc

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tion of the earliest ages, and presented incongruities with the universally received accounts.

Nor are you to suppose that the preservation of these books was an easy matter. It had to be effected in face of the most determined and deadly opposition. Property and life were perilled, and not seldom lost, in the attempt. In fact, it was not by, but in opposition to a priesthood, a most powerful, unscrupulous and persecuting priesthood - that of Paganism, that they were kept from destruction. It is equally true

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that there were causes which might have set them aside within as well as without the church. From the earliest ages, great diversities of opinion have agitated the communities of Christians. Yet were these books universally received, and their essential integrity was maintained in all parts of the Christian world, in the East, the West, the North, the South. Whatever varieties of opinion obtained, and how eager soever any party were for the establishment of their own notions, all were uniform in their sanction of the Gospel histories, and none impeached the authority to which their antagonists appealed. And when you call to mind the bitterness which sectarianism has always evinced, how-except on the supposition of the unquestionableness of the authority of these narratives, can you account for this universal agreement? Those who had not only the best opportunity, but also most stringent reasons for invalidating the authority, or putting an end to the existence of these histories-the sectaries within the Church, and the heathen without, were unable to set them aside; and well therefore may we receive works which have passed safely through so fiery an ordeal. Indeed, in the whole circle of ancient literature there never were books which encountered so much hostility, or stood so severe a test; nor are there any for which there is either so much, so diversified, or so concurring testimony. Disallow the Gospels; you have no ground on which to believe any historical narrative whatever. Whatever opinion you

may entertain of particular passages in the Gospels, or whatever theory you may hold respecting their origin, you cannot-except you are ignorant or wilful, or except 'you are prepared to erase the memory of the past-you cannot refuse to receive these histories as containing, in the main, an account of the teachings and doings of Christ.

Again; the existence of the Christian religion is an undoubted fact. Its influence can be followed up as the course of a river from the ocean to its mountain bed. An origin it must have had. Can any other be assigned than that which is presented in the Christian histories ? Does profane history present a different explanation of the event? Christianity may have arisen in a compara tively obscure part of the world, but it very soon forced itself on the attention of the Roman Empire, and ere long levelled its superstitions with the dust. It is an historical fact, that before the end of the first century its prevalence became an object of earnest solicitude to the Emperors of Rome themselves, and that its professors were subjected to penalties and persecution at the hands of Roman governors. Can you believe that the priests and the learned men were blind or indifferent to its rise and progress? If they could have exploded its pretensions, had they not the will? And whose ability equal to theirs? Argument would have been a more effectual weapon than the prison, or death. And if violence was employed, we may be well assured that reason was either wanting, or proved insufficient. Now what more easy, if the Christian histories contained an imposture, than for the Roman authorities to have had it detected, and to have had the real facts recorded in the pages of contemporary history? Was this course pursued? Does contemporary history present a different account from what we find in the Gospels? On the contrary, the historian Tacitus and the historian Matthew agree in the main facts which narrate the origin of Christianity, though of course they vary in the coloring which they

throw around them. Tacitus, who must have been born about twenty years after the death of Christ, inasmuch as we know he married in the year 77, and in the years 88 and 97 had attained the highest offices which a subject' could hold in the state-Tacitus, in speaking of the crime of the Emperor Nero in setting the city on fire, which was done in the year 64, about the very time when the Gospels were written, uses these words-words in which the rise and progress of Christianity are recorded in exact accordance with the accounts in our books;- To suppress, therefore, this common rumor (of having set the city on fire) Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, and spread not only over Judæa, the source of this evil, but reached the city also; whither flow, from all quarters, all things vile and shameful, and where they find shelter and encouragement. At first, they only were apprehended who confessed themselves of the sect; afterwards a vast multitude, discovered by them all which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city, as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived, as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified; others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up as lights in the night-time, and thus burned to death. Nero made use of his own gardens as a theatre upon the occasion, and also exhibited the diversions of the circus, sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer, at other times driving a chariot himself: till at length, these men, though really criminal, and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be com

miserated, as a people who were destroyed not out of regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man.' 'Divers facts,' says the learned and judicious Lardner, of the evangelical history are here attested that our Saviour was put to death as a malefactor by Pontius Pilate, Procurator under Tiberius; that from Christ the people called Christians had their name and sentiments; that this superstition or religion had its rise in Judæa, where also it spread, notwithstanding the ignominious death of the founder of it, 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, where, in the tenth or eleventh year of Nero, and before, (that is, about 30 years after the crucifixion of Christ) Christians were very numerous; and that the professors of this religion were reproached and hated, and underwent many and grievous sufferings. Certainly, the great number of Christians at Rome at this time, and their sufferings, are two things very observable.'*

Did time permit, it would be easy to show, from the collections made by the same impartial and indefatigable writer whose words I have just cited, that the civil and social state of Judæa, as described or implied in the Christian histories, corresponds not only in leading circumstances, but in minute details, with what we know it was in the first century, from the evidence of independent witnesses. Were this the place, I might also prove, from the peculiarities of dialect in which these histories are penned, that they were written in Judæa, within the first century, by persons who must have been Jews, and that they could not have been produced under any other circumstances. Such, then, being the case-as these histories are thus found to correspond in essential particulars with unquestionable facts, and to give an account which is known to be * Vol. 6, p. 628; Edition 1827.

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