sons believing it, and staking all that was most valuable to them upon its truth, from the date assigned to its occurrence to the present hour. It is not extravagant to say, that no memorial which was ever preserved of any past event has a thousandth part of the same title to be trusted, as the memorial of the life and death of Jesus, which is the Christian religion. We may challenge the ingenuity of all the world to show how that religion ever came to be set up, unless the main facts which it records did actually happen.

That religion was set up; and therefore it must be argued, that Jesus, having attracted some attention and raised a party in Judæa, during his life, with hopes which were cut short by his execution;-his followers, from some unknown motive, conspired to introduce a new religion, of which Jesus was made the author and head; and attributed to him such adventures, endowments, and doctrines, as might best suit their object.

It were too much to say, that this was impossible; and the phenomenon before us, the existing religion, if its origin were not indeed divine, may be accounted for on this supposition, and on no other.

18

CHAPTER II.

Opposition of Christianity to the Opinions prevailing amongst the Jews.

WHAT

HAT objection is there to the supposition stated at the conclusion of the preceding chap

ter, viz. that a party of Jews fabricated the religion, which they set out to teach in the name and under the authority of Jesus?

Before I can reply to this question, I must consider the nature of the religion, and of the people among whom it originated, and to whom it was proposed. Truth is lost in generalities. Any thing appears possible, or even probable, on cursory reflection, in a distant country, and when eighteen centuries have intervened. But whoever is in earnest, and afraid to judge wrong in so serious a question, must not lose himself in an imaginary period of confusion or anarchy, but carry himself back to the time and place

where the religion originated which it is supposed so easy to fabricate.

T

The scene of what is related in the Gospel is laid in Jerusalem. And there seems no room to deny that the religion of Jesus was there first formed into a system, promulgated, and practised. We shall be assisted in our judgment, by considering what was the state of Jerusalem at this time, as to size, civilization, religion, and popular opinion.

Jerusalem, at this period, was a city of considerable population. It was also a place of great resort, for those especially whose minds had been in any degree awakened to the subject of religion. Jews of wealth, talents, or learning, who were spread in the course of their various pursuits over the continent of Asia, were drawn annually to the capital of their nation, for the purpose of legitimate worship in the temple of their ancestors. And we inci

:

I Acts, ii. 5.

dentally learn, that foreigners also, who had never embraced the law of Moses, but had become acquainted, through the Jewish Scriptures, with a purer faith and a more rational worship than prevailed around them, were often attracted to the metropolis of the religion which they had learned to hold in veneration2.

We perceive at once, that in a place like this, the idea of introducing a new religion is more likely to have occurred, than in a country wholly barbarous and unenlightened. At the period in question there was more probability of such an adventure being undertaken in Greece or Italy, than in Britain or Gaul. But it does not follow that the attempt was more likely to succeed. Men's minds are pre-occupied; and every novel opinion, before it can establish itself, must dislodge a system already in possession.

At the period we speak of, three remarkable sects are known to have existed in Jerusalem,

2 Acts, viii. 27.