church. If the mighty power of God was with the apostles, no wonder that thousands and tens of thousands should become obedient to their message. If the quickening energy of the living Spirit was seen, on the one hand, in external signs and wonders, rendering all gainsayers inexcusable; and, on the other, in inward, powerful, and all-subduing movements of the heart and conscience, what wonder was it if the congregated multitudes of Pentecoste trembled, repented, and turned to God; and if the Pagan world responded to the mighty and gracious impulse? By the nature of the facts to be accounted for, then, no less than by the actual data of Christianity, are we driven to the conclusion, that there was an interior and hidden but all controlling power, which accompanied and rendered effectual the first propagation of Christianity, which has watched over it from age to age, and which occasions all its success and all its blessed influence in the day in which we live. I conclude this branch of evidence in the language of an eloquent living author:-"Here is a religious

system, denominated Christian, which enters the world at a most inauspicious period, supposing it to be an imposture. It has not one principle in common with the religions which then prevailed. It is attempted to be propagated by a few persons who are signally disqualified for the undertaking, and are hated of all nations. It is opposed, from the very first, by Jew and Gentile, and chiefly by those who had most power and influence in their hands. Moreover, this religion is hostile to human opinion, human prejudice, human interest, human nature; and this is apparent from the admitted nature of man and the avowed principles of the gospel, as well as from the facts, that when men have been induced to adopt the Christian name, they have remained at enmity to the Christian faith, that there has been, in every age, a predominant disposition to misunderstand and misrepresent, to pervert and degrade it.

been propagated over the

and

Yet has this religion

earth with a facility

altogether unparalleled by any art or science." Yet has it found a place for itself in many a

mind and country, to which the simplest mathematical demonstrations are at this moment unsolved problems.

"What is the conclusion? It is it must be this that the religion of Christ could not have been propagated by any earthly power—that it could not have been propagated by any mere external agency of Providence-that it could have been propagated only by a spiritual and supernatural influence addressed to the perceptions and affections of men,--and therefore that the religion of Christ is DIVINE, and its propagation through all ages is a DISTINCT, INDEPENDENT, and SPEAKING EVIDENCE of its DIVINITY.'

5. The Evidence derived from a survey of the moral and social benefits conferred on mankind by Christianity.

This branch of evidence may be treated, like the preceding one, as a question simply of fact.

See a Discourse by the Rev. A Reed, on "The Evidence of Revelation derived from the success of the Gospel," in a Volume entitled "Lectures on some of the Principal Evidences of Revelation, delivered at the Monthly Meetings, &c.," pp. 225, 226.

For if it can be shewn that Christianity has. done more than all other causes combined to augment the resources of man's present enjoyment; if it can be shewn that it has heightened, to an almost inconceivable degree, all the social virtues; if it can be shewn that human nature has risen to an unheard-of elevation under its benign auspices, it will follow, as by resistless consequence, after all the fruitless experiments of Greece and Rome, that it owes its origin to the Fountain of all wisdom and benevolence.

It is a fact, then, that "the world by wisdom" never reformed itself. For the space of four thousand years effort after effort was made, but without avail, to reduce mankind to some standard of obedience, and to rescue them from the dominion of selfishness and crime. This process of renovation was attempted in the fairest portions of the globe, and amidst all the advantages of the highest intellectual cultivation. It was tried in the heart of Europe and Asia, when philosophy and arts had reached their greatest eminence, and when the human mind had been nurtured in the schools to prodigious greatness.

In a thousand forms the task of bettering man's moral condition had been tried, but without even the shadow of success. Many of the precepts, indeed, of the heathen philosophers were good; but the motives urged by them were sometimes absurd, often vicious, and always powerless upon the great mass of the people. Their own standard of morals, in not a few instances, was glaringly defective; and as it respected the community at large, the theories of the schools did. not so much as reach even the outward ear.

In all their pomp and magnificence, when poetry, and painting, and statuary, and arms, and empire had reached the very zenith of their glory, Greece and Rome were as little purged from crime and moral degradation as were the savage hoards of the north, who, in wild fury, broke in upon the empress of the world's destiny. The extreme of refinement, and the extreme of moral turpitude, met on the same theatre, and in the same actors. A base and monstrous idolatry everywhere prevailed, and everywhere associated itself with crimes which are reserved in Christian countries for the worst of men, and for?