drawn by heathens, give such a demonstrative proof of the power of their faith, and such a practical illustration of the precepts of Jesus, as, without the need of a special comparison, shows them at once to have been a living epistle known and read of all men. All history may be safely challenged to produce an instance ever elsewhere seen of human nature in so fair a form, or of any society of men besides, except under the same influence, ever known as so "lovely and of good report." Well might a deistical poet, in false pity of their weakness, testify that they cherished the sure hope of immortality, while the testimony which he gives of their lives shows that it was a hope which purified the heart, and that that faith was theirs which at once overcometh the world and worketh by love. Their meeting together on a stated day to sing hymns unto Christ as a God shows that they forgot not the assembling of themselves together; yet their desisting, when enjoined, even from this practice or from their feasts of love, showed also that they were obedient to existing powers or authorities, so far as compliance could possibly be rendered without relinquishing their faith in Christ and the worship of God, who, unlike the deities to which they would not fall down, heareth and seeth in secret. Their mutual compact and obligation, by a sacrament, to abstain from all sinful practices, was only an exercise of that love which worketh no ill to his neighbour, and was but setting their seal to that bond of the Christian covenant, to which, as appears from their sacred writings, they believed that God had already set his seal. "The Lord knoweth them that are his; and let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." Their" sovereign contempt for all the things of this world" might be deemed the veriest folly in the worldling's estimation; yet, in confirmation of the truth of the charge, it may indeed be said, that when these things came into competition or comparison with the knowledge of Christ, the love of God, and the hope of glory, an apostle or a true disciple of Jesus could suffer the loss of them all, and, accounting them but dung that they might win Christ, hold them thus in as great disparagement and contempt, as ever any of those whose god is the world, and who mind and who love earthly things, cast upon the blessings that are spiritual and eternal. The testimony of the enemies of Christians is conjoined with their own, in one word, that they had all things in common. And while they suffered joyfully the spoiling of their goods, their disinterestedness and alacrity in serving and relieving one another testified that there were uses of wealth of which they were not so ignorant as the world around them. And the crowning and characteristic virtue of Christian love was no less the marvel of the hea then than the mark of their faith. By having love one to

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another they were to be known of all men as the disciples of Jesus and by that they were known of all. Having turned from idols and renounced the gods of the Greeks," in the words both of a profane writer and of a Christian apostle, they were actuated by new motives as well as professed a new faith; selfishness was abjured together with idolatry; love was practised where Christ was received as their lawgiver; the new commandment which he gave unto them was that they should love one another; and while from others they could "bear all things," among themselves they lived and loved as "brethren." And, to close at length, and yet hastily and prematurely, the obvious analogy between the Christian precepts as recorded in the gospel, and the character of the primitive Christians as detailed by their persecutors or adversaries, they so lived according to their scriptures, as having their conversation honest among the Gentiles, as putting to silence the ignorance of foolish men with their well-doing, as adorning the doctrine of their Saviour in all things, so that, though some falsely accused them, he who was of the contrary part had no evil truly to say against them, their enemies being judges.

It would not be an object of rational research to seek for an acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Christ and of the truth of his religion from among those men, whatever might have been their talent or their station, who adhered to paganism, and consequently held the Christian faith, as a system of religious belief, in contemptuous abhorrence. They give all that could have been expected at their hands, and withhold nothing that was needful to be known from them. And their testimony of itself has qualities that could scarcely have pertained to the word of a Christian, however true. For, while even a martyr could not have borne better or clearer testimony to facts connected with the rise of Christianity, or more accordant with the scriptural record than that which is concentrated in the evidence of heathenswhether we consult historians, or a governor, or emperors, or moralists, or an epigrammatist, or a satirist, or a descriptive poet, or recanting Christians, or an imperial apostatebelievers in Christ could not have testified from personal experience of the feelings of those who hated his name and persecuted his cause; nor could they have exposed the sentiments of their betrayers, revilers, and murderers so fully and freely as these have been told by their own lips or written by their own hands. This evidence comes more directly, immediately, and conclusively from themselves. And the testimony of enemies, to facts corroborative of the truths they gainsay, is of all others the most conclusive, and may well stifle all doubts and close all controversy in respect to the truths which it confirms and could not contravene. And

when the most perfect concurrence subsists, as if things opposite to each other were here integrated into one, between the pagan and Christian documents, respecting the origin and rise of Christianity, the fate of its author, the nature of the doctrine, the mode of its promulgation, and the manner of its reception; whether, as diametrically opposite, by those who opposed or those who received it; and the rapidity and extent of its prevalence against all opposition, and the character and the sufferings, alike uncommon or unparalleled, of those who maintained its truth unto the death, it needs something else than the ordinary exercise of a sound and unbiased judgment to discover on what pretext or shadow of reason these statements, thus substantiated on the most independent testimony, can be discredited; or how the very existence of Christianity, in its present form, and extent, and paramount influence on the fate of the world, could possibly be accounted for on any other supposition than on the admission of the truth of the only history of its origin and early progress in the world, which is or has ever been known to exist, whether written by friend or by foe.

As ancient history, deserving of the name, began its labours at the very time when the Old Testament history closed, and when prophecy, itself sealed up, required in every future age a confirmation of its truth; so it is, perhaps, not less striking and important that such a narrative should have been given as that of the celebrated historian Tacitus' description of the progress of Christianity and of the persecution of Christians, at the very time when the New Testament history ceased, and when the evangelists and disciples of Christ, as their most violent adversaries admit, had committed unto writings, acknowledged by Christians, the history of the life of Christ and of the acts of his apostles. As both dates are fixed by Tacitus, and, it may be added, by universal consent, the space of only thirty years intervened from the death of Christ to the persecution of the Christians under Nero. These two dates may be held undeniably fixed. Within that brief interval, during which the gospel was propagated to a marvellous extent, the evangelists and disciples of Christ lived and wrote. And some of the New Testament Scriptures, such as those of John, universally acknowledged to have been the last of the apostles, were not written till after the time to which the description given by Tacitus refers.

Some such history, therefore, there must have been of the origin, rise, and progress of Christianity, as that which is recorded by the evangelists and disciples of Christ, and as may be gathered, in connexion with these, from the various epistles addressed to Christian churches, if the circumstances connected with the rise of a new religion of most rapid

growth had not from the beginning been consigned over to everlasting oblivion. Every impartial and reflecting reader must see that it needs exactly such details as those which the Christian Scriptures present, in all their clearness, simplicity, detailed and varied narratives, to fill up the history of Christianity and of its progress during the short intervening space from its commencement, so as to accord in these respects with the facts which are implied or explicitly detailed in the narrative of Tacitus, and subsequently in the epistle of Pliny, as well as with the later testimony of more bitter enemies of the cross. Instead of exaggerating the inroads on paganism made by the gospel, even as soon as its career was well begun, and drawing with a friendly and too partial hand the character of their brethren, or painting, as suffering humanity no less sorely than unjustly tried might be supposed to have done, in too dark colours the hatred and cruelty of their enemies; had one jot been abated in any of these respects by the penmen of the New Testament, in so far some truth must have been modified or concealed, which, as it does stand in the written word, is essential to a perfect concord with the averments of those who had neither part nor lot in the matter, but to set themselves against the truth, which their evidence, so far and so strongly as it can, thus directly and explicitly confirms.

CHAPTER VI.

OF THE GENUINENESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES, AS WRITTEN BY THE EVANGELISTS AND APOSTLES OF JESUS.

NUMBERLESS are the historical facts that meet with an unhesitating assent, for which no evidence can be adduced at all comparable in abundance and precision with that which, in the merely preliminary view we have already taken, is so palpably borne to the origin and propagation of the Christian faith. And yet, instead of having exhausted the subject, we have scarcely entered on the Christian testimony, which opens up a field too wide to be explored, and presents us with evidence too abundant to be adduced in a summary treatise like the present. Happily, the task is needless, for the work has been already done in such a manner as to render all other labour concerning it superfluous. And, if we mistake not, this, in right order, is its proper place, the unassailable position it maintains, or in which its evidence is, without controversy, irresistible. And were the reader, unsparing

of labour, in the true spirit of research, to enter, if needful for satisfaction the most complete, into the thorough examination of all the component parts of this redundant demonstration, and to peruse the accumulated testimonies from the earliest ages that are collected and arranged ready to his hand, and open to his inspection in Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel, or in a more condensed and engaging form in the still more accessible pages of Paley's Evidences, he would not then need a prompter to tell that the only prudence or wisdom, according to that of this world, which unbelievers could display, and the only resource to which they could betake themselves, was to evade the testimony.

The evidence borne by enemies, and its perfect accordance with scriptural history, prepare the way for the more full and direct witness concerning their religion which could come from believers alone. The view taken of Christianity by its enemies could only be external. They could tell no more than what they saw in looking on the outer sanctuary. They could only represent what they witnessed in others whose faith was opposite to their own, and whose conduct in life, and bearing in death, baffled the comprehension of the wisest among them. And if we seek a more minute and intimate knowledge of the nature and history of Christianity, and of the credentials of the authenticity of the gospel as the writings held sacred by Christians, it may best be obtained from those who best can tell-who had the knowledge to communicate of the faith they cherished and the writings they believed. It is not the man who stands without, and who has never entered an edifice, who is asked to detail and to describe all that is to be found within it; but he who claims the habitation as his own may fully disclose that of which the other was unconscious. Even so, although heathens may best tell of their own feelings towards Christians, it is not for them fully to expound what believers knew concerning their scriptures. But those to whom these writings were addressed, and to whom they were committed to be handed down from generation to generation in all the churches, are better able to testify concerning those scriptures which their enemies, as will be fully shown, acknowledged as their own. And it is to those who believed in the Scriptures that we have to look for such full and positive evidence as may authenticate the New Testament, as indeed the writings of the evangelists and disciples of Jesus, and give proof of their identity from age to age, that from hence we may learn, more fully than heathens could unfold, the history of the life as well as of the death of Christ, the nature as well as the progress of his religion, the principles as well as the profession of his disciples, the faith they cherished, as well as the character they sustained and the trials

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