of atheism to exclude God from all concern with the world, of which he is acknowledged to be the Creator. True, we do not now experience his interposition. Neither do we perceive it in the direction of the natural world. But he did interpose in the natural world, till he had established such laws as were necessary to maintain its order. And so in respect of religion. He manifested himself openly till he had established a final revelation of his will, and now leaves that revelation to work its effect upon the world without the further operation of his visible power.

accusing and defending: we should attend the convicts to the stake, or the cross; see their mild fortitude, their heroic benevolence: or, first, we should attend them to prison, and see their fellow Christians crowding about them, giving up every sort of convenience, in order to afford them relief and support in their confinement. We should enter into the domestic retirements of those families who were wholly converted, and see their amiable virtues, or their animated piety: or of those which were become Christians in part, and see the conflicts between religious and filial duty; between Christian devotion and fraternal affection. We should see the zealous labours of the clergy; their minds inflamed with the greatness, the novelty, the danger of their situation: free from worldly views of gain, or rank, or power, wholly fixed upon heaven, and the means of attaining it; instructing, persuading, exhorting, convincing."

II. One objection, however, to the Christian miracles still remains to be noticed; the inflexible obstinacy of the ruling party among the Jews, and, indeed, of the great mass of the nation. Who could withhold assent, when the most astonishing miracles were exhibited before their eyes?

In reply to this, we should observe, that it is an error to set the Christians against the Jews, and the Jews against the Christians, as a body. The preaching of the apostles made the Jews a divided body; and the majority of the earliest Christians were, in fact, converted Jews. The conversion of one part removes the objection arising from the obduracy of the other. For what account can be given of that conversion, if the whole history is untrue? Whereas the unbelief of the greater number is sufficiently explained on the known principles of human nature. We need not go far for an exemplification. We look around, and see a community calling itself Christian; and though a few may confess their scepticism, the majority would in

dignantly repel the insinuation that they disbelieve the Gospel. Yet how few, how very few comparatively, act in consistency with their profession, or live conformably with the Christian faith? Not because they are convinced that it does not deserve to be believed, but because it interferes with their pleasures, or their habits, or their prejudices, and therefore they pass it over with a notice too inconsiderable to be acted upon. On similar grounds it is easy to understand the conduct of the Jews. When we remember the confession of personal guilt, which their acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah must have implied: the complete sacrifice of every thing in this world which it required: the prejudices to be renounced; the passions to be overcome; and further, when we add to this the obligations which it would have imposed upon them, the change of personal conduct which it demanded, to which they had the same repugnance as all other men; we shall perceive, I think, that national confession would have been an act of national repentance little to be expected from their character as a

people, or from the nature of mankind in general.

Where there is a strong indisposition to believe, pretexts for not believing are readily discovered. The history of Jesus acquaints us, that the persons in authority among in authority among his countrymen withdrew their attention from the miracles, on pretence of their being wrought through the agency of evil spirits. The prejudices of some rendered them unwilling to believe him the Messiah; the habits of others disinclined them to listen to his doctrines; and this set them upon seeking for an explanation of the supernatural power, which they could not but acknowledge. They found one: which, however ridiculous it may appear to us, at least gives the opinion of that age and nation. This solution was as satisfactory to them as that of magic to those of the heathen, who paid sufficient attention to the Christian story to know what it contained. The early apologists themselves assure us, that this consideration prevented them from alleging the miracles of Jesus as their

strongest argument: they laid far greater stress upon the prophecies; and their choice in this matter, however unwise it may appear to us, seems justified by the ease with which Celsus thinks that he has disposed of all difficulty, when he has attributed the Christian miracles to a skilful use of magic 7. People are easily satisfied when they are willing to be deceived; and a vague reference to such an explanation, though quite as insufficient to an honest inquirer then, as the plea of witchcraft to an enlightened philosopher now, might be enough to divert attention, and resist the first weak impressions of conscientious conviction. Particularly when such a powerful array of immediate interests opposed the strength of evidence, and fortified the prejudices naturally entertained by the votaries and priests of an expiring religion 3.

6 Justin Mart. Apol. i. ch. xxxvii.

7 See, on this subject, Watson's Letters to Gibbon, page 147, &c.

8 Much more might be said upon these points; but the question has been so fully and so ably treated, both by Paley and Chalmers, that no reader, I imagine, can require further satisfaction than he may meet with in those writers, respect