themselves, where reason may have an opportunity to escape from the tyranny of passion, and conscience to re-assert her dreaded power.

IV. The last characteristic of these Discourses which I have space to notice, is their recognition, in the nature of the gospel itself, of the views and labours of the church, and the effusions of the Spirit, of causes which not only render it certain that the religion of Christ will continue to sustain itself in our land, but authorize the fullest assurance that it will acquire a much more general diffusion, and ultimately rise to a far more predominating influence over the population at large.

"We shall endeavour to show that the gospel of Jesus Christ will universally prevail; from its peculiar adaptedness to gratify the wants of our sensitive nature; from the intimations in the history of the world, which the Creator of the universe has given, that such is his determination; and from the fact that the elements of society have been so combined, that at some time or other, such must be the necessary result." Dr. Wayland.

The views here exhibited and eloquently enforced in the Discourse from which these sentences are transcribed, are the dictate of sound forecast and philosophy, as well as the fit offspring of christian faith. The apprehensions which some appear to entertain, and suppositions that are often advanced, that religion may ere long become extinct in our land, or that at least the nation at large may turn to open and shameless infidelity, indicate as slight a consideration of the great principles of human nature, the constitution of civilized society, and the various causes which act on men in favor of religion, beside a pure attachment to its spiritual character, as they do of the nature of religion

itself, and the assurances with which we are presented in the gospel of its perpetuity and universal prevalence. I regret, to perceive from the last report of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, that an organ of that body has suffered himself in so important a paper, to indulge in conjectures or suppositions, as they are perhaps, rather than apprehensions, of this character. It is unsuited to the dignity of that venerable body, to which not only the American church, but the christian world, in a sense, looks up for an example of severe wisdom, long forecast, and superiority to impulse from the transient shocks that disturb society, to enter on speculations that have so little of the sobriety of fact, or probability to recommend them; and unwise to resort to them for motives to excite or sustain an adequate interest in the great objects to whose advancement that institution is devoted,

No nation can ever, at large, become the disciples of infidelity without adequate causes; and these causes must obviously work their effect, either by obliterating the knowledge, or shrouding the evidences of the truth of religion; or by pouring on the general mind such a tempest of temptation, as to prevent that evidence from exerting its ordinary and natural influence. Christianity, however, is not only sustained by evidences which no human intellect can ever subvert or shake, and which none can even assail, except on principles that sap the foundations of all certainty in history, and all confidence in testimony; but by proofs so clear, abundant, and convincing, that no ordinary obstacles of ignorance or pride, nor temptations of prejudice, malevolence, or enmity, are adequate to resist their power. The experiment of eighteen hundred years has shown, that wherever it is freely diffused, and enjoys an opportunity of

exerting its appropriate influence, it always succeeds in commanding a general assent. Not a solitary exception is recorded on the page of history; nor an instance in which it has been carried to pagan nations and allowed to make a fair experiment of its powers, that it has not gained a foothold; and won the reason, conscience, heart and hopes of man, to its adoption. It is on the conviction of this great fact indeed, that the society to which I have alluded, and all others, act in their attempts to plant the gospel in foreign lands, and sustain it in our own. If it were not thus known and felt that the gospel carries within itself the adequate and certain means of gaining the assent of the great inass of those to whom it is fairly presented, and that it will always, to some extent at least, prove efficacious through the enforcing influences of the spirit of grace that attend its annunciation, none would ever be found to enter on so arduous an undertaking. No such uncertainty, however, attends it. It is as well ascertained a fact, as any other in the history of man or the laws of providence, that the gospel, when fitly offered to communities and nations, invariably produces those effects on large and often prevailing numbers, and it is accordingly as much a matter of settled expectation, as any other effect which the usual course of events has shown always to result from appropriate causes.

The question then respecting the probable or possible extinction of christianity in this land, resolves itself into the simple problem, whether any causes exist or are coming into existence, that can either universally extinguish the knowledge of the gospel, or raise against it such a storm of prejudice and enmity, as totally to disarm it of its power over the general intellect, and cause it to be discarded and proscribed-events, manifestly that are not only without

a shade of likelihood, but that cannot easily be believed to lie within the sphere of possibility. Their production would obviously involve a general suspension of cavcation and extinction of its means, an obstruction of all the ordinary channels of knowledge, and a total suppression of the freedom of opinion. But these effects could never be produced without not only a total extinction of liberty, but a subjection of the nation-considering its present character, and the arts which now enter into the very fabric of civilized society, and are essential to its subsistence-to a more abject slavery than was ever yet experienced. These arts, and the sciences in which they have their origin, cannot be wrenched from the social structure, without a total dissolution of its elements. The press would need to be annihilated, the ministry and every profession exterminated, knowledge extinguished, and the church blotted from existence; but these could never be swept from the scene, without hurling the whole nation back into the lowest depths of barbarism. The question in effect then is, whether any probabilities exist, that the nation itself will ever suppress, or suffer any other to extinguish within it all the sciences and arts which form the chief means and ornaments of civilized life, the existence and exercise of which, as they necessarily involve the general and free diffusion of knowledge, and the unfettered action of the press, must accordingly, while continued, yield the right, and place the means of religious information within the access of the community at large.

No such resemblance subsists between the institutions, condition, and character of this nation, and those of the French of the last century, as to authorize any inference from their history to the probability of similar future events with us. The causes which here ensure the perpetuation

of the knowledge and influence of the gospel, had never any prevalent agency or being there, nor have those which produced her general infidelity, any existence here. That nation never enjoyed the blessings of a general education, a well-educated and faithful ministry, a universal diffusion of the scriptures, and a free toleration of opinion; and yet though debarred of all these blessings, it required the impostures, oppression, and accumulated provocations of a thousand years, and the combination of a series of incidental causes, to which, perhaps, no possible conjunction of events could ever again give birth, to push them on to that terrific paroxysm of madness and impiety. The almost › entire restriction of religious knowledge to the sacerdotal order, the ignorance and profligacy of a large portion of the clergy, the absurd and demoralizing doctrines and indulgences of the church, the oppression of a despotic government, of which that church was alternately the tool and the directress-even these numerous and powerful causes that had accumulated strength and exacerbation through a long tract of ages, were not alone enough to have produced at that period, that frightful convulsion; and never, perhaps, could have given it existence, had not a sudden and great accession to general knowledge imparted a strong impulse to the public mind; a class of novel and mighty geniuses been led to combine their agency in assailing christianity, and finally the eruption of our revolution, poured a glare of political light on the nation at large, and kindled an ardent desire and hope of liberty. Had the destiny of even a score of the chief champions of infidelity been changed to obscurity by any series of events, it is probable that all other causes would never have wrought that nation up to a public abjuration of christianity; and yet that abjuration