of diffusing and maintaining the real spirit of Christianity even amongst professed Christians; you know the reluctance of the human mind to the true obedience of faith; you know how soon negligence, vice, ignorance, obduracy, creep in; and with what difficulty they are expelled from the mass of any population. You know that it is only by a simple recurrence to the doctrine of the New Testament, with fervent prayer for the ordinary and sanctifying, but more abundant influences of the Holy Spirit, that any success attends our labours. You are prepared, therefore, to judge how far the feeble and unsupported apostles were likely to have subdued the idolatrous and corrupt gentile world to the doctrine of the cross, without that extraordinary succour which it is the object of this lecture to exhibit.

Cast your eyes, moreover, on the page of ecclesiastical history, and tell me how have reforms in Christianity, when it has been decayed, succeeded-how did the labours of Augustine, and Claudius of Turin, and Peter Waldo, and Luther and his noble associates prosper? Was it by unaided power, was it by human wisdom, was it by mere reasoning and moral persuasion? Was it not by a recurrence to the mighty power of the Spirit of God--not indeed in his miraculous operations, but in

those sacred offices of making the revealed truth of the gospel effectual to the heart, which had been forgotten during the ages of Papal superstition? And, after all, how limited has been the success of any or all these reforms, compared with the rapid triumphs of the first preachers of the Christian truth, amidst difficulties infinitely more complicated! Every case we can contemplate, in short, illustrates that glorious and immediate interference of the God of truth and mercy, to which the gospel owed its first establishment and success.

But we must pass on.

So much time, however, has been occupied, that we can only offer a few remarks on the proximate topic, the PRESERVATION and CONTINUANCE OF CHRISTIANITY IN THE WORLD. For so holy a doctrine could never have maintained its ground, as it has done, for eighteen centuries, if it had not been from God. It is not the mere circumstance of duration on which I here insist; but the duration of such a religion, so holy in its texture, so high in its claims, so strict in its laws, so unworldly in its spirit, so opposed to all the vices and passions of mankind in all its precepts,such a religion assuming to be of God, and resting its pretensions on the broad and pal

pable miraculous actions of its founders and first teachers, must, if it had been a delusion and unattended with a divine interference, have failed, and have long since been left to the derision of the world. Had Christianity been of man, its folly would have been detected, and the enthusiasm or the craft of its abettors exposed, sometime or other after its promulgation. Some inherent defect or some outward opposition would have unmasked the deceit. For eighteen hundred years it has been in a state of continual probation; it has passed through every variety of obstacle; its enemies have had every opportunity of exhibiting its weaker parts, if it has any; or inventing some system which may supersede it, if such can be found. And yet this religion which began by encountering all the prejudices and passions of mankind, remains to the present hour, unsullied in its purity, untouched in its evidences, undiminished in its virtue and effects. If any historical facts of unquestionable authority had been found in any part of the world, to refute its records, it would have sunk before the discovery; but so far is this from being the case, that the researches of historians and the skill of philosophers, as we have observed in previous lectures, have only confirmed the scripture narratives. The wide circle of the whole globe

has supplied no one undoubted testimony against our religion, though not half of it had been traversed when the scriptures were written. The Christian Church has seen every shade of human opinion, has witnessed every variety of persecution, has been placed under all possible circumstances of civilization, knowledge, and form of government, and the result of these united experiments has been a continually encreased attestation to her immutable truth and purity. She has, moreover, been called to encounter the secret sap of divisions and corruptions in her own body; she has been dragged into unnatural alliances with all the crookedness and ambition of human policy; she has been stripped at one time of her proper attributes, and been loaded at another with.corruptions and superstitions-but from all these transformations she has emerged without injury. The standard of her sacred books has remained the same, the blessing of the Holy Spirit in his sanctifying influence has continued, and a reviving piety in various ages, has recalled her wandering family to her pure and divine doctrines and temper.

Open attacks have been, also, made upon the Christian faith by infidels and sceptics. In the last century but one, we experienced in England the assaults of a profligate but insidious band

of literary unbelievers. In our own day we have witnessed the conspiracy of the French philosophical school to obliterate the remembrance of Christianity from the earth-and we have witnessed also the dignity with which she has risen from the combat, and reared again her standard in the very country which attempted her overthrow.

Never was Revelation more honoured in the eyes of Christendom and the world, than by the efforts which have been made of late years in the work of Christian Missions in various parts of the Heathen countries. And, perhaps, the one single institution of the Bible Society, simple as is its structure, and warmly as it has been opposed, has done more to mark the importance of the scriptures and to recall men to this one fountain of truth, than all the other expedients which have been devised.

In short, no other instance can be produced in the history of the world, of a system of doctrines or opinions which has withstood for so many centuries a succession of attacks, varying through all the stages between merciless persecution and malicious sophistry, but the instance of Christianity. Paganism fell the instant the secular arm was removed, and she was left to her own resources. Mahometanism was planted by the sword, and is sinking in proportion as