opinions and habits, avowed their belief in the crucified Nazarene, lived pure and spiritual lives, and died with peace and composure in his cause. Two of the very first converts to this religion, were persons the best adapted of all others to detect an imposition-Saul, the Jewish zealot, and Sergius Paulus, the Roman proconsul. The first, both by education and habit attached to the institutions of Judaism; the second, a prudent man; a person of rank and authority, and attended by a Jew, desirous to turn him from the faith. Both were men of education, enquiry and talent. The submission of such men to the gospel, more especially St. Paul, whose labours and sufferings afterwards, in the cause of Christianity, have never been paralleled, and who crowned those labours by his martyrdom, can only be accounted for by the divine power which attended the religion of Christ."

11 It is no small confirmation of the argument, from the first propagation of the gospel, that the unbeliever is obliged to have recourse to the very effects produced by the Christian doctrines, for reasons to disparage the divine interference to which we so justly ascribe it. What are Gibbon's five natural causes, as he terms them-the zeal of the first Christians, their doctrine of a future life, the miraculous powers ascribed to them, their pure morals, and their union—but so many effects of Christianity on the hearts and lives of the converts? And what does he gain by calling their zeal into

To judge more easily of the amazing force of this argument, let us compare the first success of the gospel, with such other cases as come under our own observation. The progress of Mahometanism is in full contrast, in all its causes and characteristics, with the Christian faith. It arose in the seventh century amongst a warlike people, in an age of gross darkness; was founded by a person of one of the best families of his country; it was composed of Jewish legends, and the popular superstitions of Arabia, mingled with sentiments and doctrines gathered from the Christian scriptures; and proposing a code of morals lax and effeminate, and rewards sensual and voluptuous-in other words, it was a religion adapted to the corrupt taste, indulgent to the passions, and modelled to the ignorance of the times. In all these respects, it illustrates by the contrast, the purity, and beneficence, and sublimity of the Christian doctrine. Mahomet further was entirely destitute of credentials-no miracles were even alleged-he pretended to no prophecies-no seal therefore of divine authority was appended to his claims

lerant, and their morals austere; and by insinuating that the doctrine of a future life, and the miraculous powers, were suppositions? Does he not betray the weakness of an argument which assumes premises against the uniform evidence of all history?

The

Whatever success then may have attended a debased and vicious religion, resting on no one attestation of a celestial original, but simply courting the passions of an age of ignorance and depravity, can never be placed in competition with the doctrine of Christianity. But Mahometanism, be it noted, had after all, no success, so long as the peaceful means of persuasion and argument were alone employed. Christianity gained the world by meek instruction and patient suffering; Mahometanism failed of making any progress, till it renounced the arts of peace, and unsheathed the sword. design of the Koran was, as we have observed, not to propagate a religion, but to form soldiers, and inspire martial courage; and it was in this way that it obtained prevalence and prosperity. It followed in the train of armies, and was propagated at the edge of the scymitar. Such a contrast displays in yet brighter lustre, the mild glory of that doctrine which, unaided by human power, and in the midst of sufferings and contempt, surpassed in the extent and splendour of its conquests, all the sanguinary conversions of the false prophet.

But, let us turn next to our Christian missions amongst the Jews and Heathen. We have just spoken of a false religion, let us now see what light our observation upon the progress of

the true, under ordinary circumstances, can cast upon the argument in hand. We have Jews and Heathens now. Efforts have been used for the conversion of both in every age of the Christian church; but more especially during the last thirty or forty years. What, however, has been the effect? A greater number of Jews certainly were converted under the first discourse of St. Peter, at the day of Pentecost, than have been gained during the eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since. And as to the heathen, probably one year of the apostolic labours amongst the Gentiles, equalled in point of success, not merely the thirty or forty years of the united exertions of the Christian church, with all its external advantages of superior civilization, influence, authority, and learning, in our own day, but the thousand years which preceded them. If the comparison be objected to on the ground that the apostles were furnished with miraculous powers, and the extraordinary measures of the grace and influence of the Holy Ghost, I grant the fact, and employ it in the confirmation of my argument. The apostolic inspiration is the point to be proved; and the admission that the immense difference between the first success of the gospel, and its present progress, is to be attributed to that inspiration, is pre

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cisely the conclusion at which we are to arrive. On the supposition that Christianity was propagated by merely human means, there is no reason why we should not succeed in our missions to the same extent as the apostles. In all other respects, except in that of the power of the Holy Spirit in his miraculous gifts and his larger measure of grace, we have much the advantage of the first propagators of the gospel. Our missionaries in India and Africa, are invested with more circumstances of respect and authority. The doctrine is the same; the heart of man the same; the effect to be produced, the same. The vast difference in the result, marks what we are now contending for, the correspondent difference in the endowments of the teachers. The apostolic doctrine, resting on miraculous operations, and sustained by the extraordinary grace of God, is the only rational account to be given of the phenomena of the case.

But, I come yet closer to ourselves, and ask any one competent to judge of the progress of religious reforms, and practical revivals of piety in our several countries and neighbourhoods, whether the propagation of truth is so rapid amongst us, as to make it probable that the first apostles were unaided by an immediate power from above? You know the difficulty