LECTURE IV.

STORICAL EVIDENCE FOR THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY.

UT is it really the case that those blessings of which I spoke in my last Lecture may be reckoned on, as red by God Himself to all who rightly enter into the ristian covenant by baptism those mighty blesss of being brought out of man's natural state of kness and hopelessness into a state of relationship wards God as of children to a loving Father; towards sus Christ (a divine Saviour, according to the Chrisin statement, once incarnate on earth, now ascended to heaven,) of union with Him intimate even as of embers of a body with the head; and with an assured eirship, in consequence of that union, to some heavenly verlasting kingdom, yet to be revealed, of God and of is Christ? In other words, is the Christian religion really and indubitably from God? This, dear young friends, is the question which you have now very solemnly and carefully to ask yourselves. It is one chief point of duty, in preparation for our Church's rite of Confirmation, that candidates like yourselves, having now come to years of discretion, should examine into the evidences of the Christian faith, and satisfy yourselves respecting them. How else can you be properly prepared for declaring, as you will at the Confirmation be called to do, that you do indeed feel bound, from personal conviction, to believe what your godfathers and godmothers provisionally engaged for you that you should believe; viz., "the articles of the Christian faith?" It is my

privilege to endeavour to help you in this examination. And, thank God, I doubt not to show you that the case is a clear one; and that, in publicly declaring your belief in the Christian faith, you will not need to do this so as might a child in any heathen or Mahometan country, when called to profess faith in some form of heathenism or Mahometanism, simply because it is the religion of your parents, and of the country you were born in. On the contrary, the more carefully that you look into the question, the more fully will you find that every evidence of divine origin and truth attaches to Christianity which either your reason, your conscience, or your heart, could desire. I say, either your reason, your conscience, or your heart. For these three marvellous faculties, through which God has elevated man above the beasts that perish, have each a distinct claim to be satisfied on such a question as this; and each, moreover, has its own peculiar perceptive power, when honestly consulted, for the discrimination of a true heaven-sent religion from one that is false. To these faculties, then, I would have you make appeal, while I sketch out, as briefly as I can with clearness, the very various evidences for the divine origin and truth of Christianity; grouping them under the four heads of the Historical, the Prophetical, the Moral, and the Experimental. The first of these four heads of evidence will constitute the subject of my present Lecture; the three last of my next Lecture. All through the discussion let REASON be considered as sitting in the Chief Judge's seat, with the CONSCIENCE and the HEART on either side, as that Judge's Judicial Assessors; for consultation, more especially, in the discussion of the two last heads of evidence, i.e. the moral and the experimental. So judged, these evidences will be found to constitute a fourfold mutually intertwining chain of evidence a chain such as never yet has been, and, I am persuaded, never can be broken.

I. The HISTORICAL EVIDENCE.

What is history? It is the story or tale, simpler it may be, or more complex, connected with any object or thing, of ancient standing. Now, in regard of most of the monuments of olden time still existent, whether objects obvious to the bodily eye, or time-hallowed institutions political or religious, it has pleased Him who is the God of truth that they should have attached to them certain marks of their time of origin, and real history, more or less open to the investigation of every sincere inquirer after truth:-marks some, it may be, stamped visibly on the objects themselves; others extant in the writing of records of the past. I say, in the writing; that wonderful medium, suggested, I doubt not, by God Himself to man, for the transmission to distant ages of a memorial of what is most important for man to know respecting the events, persons, and opinions of each preceding age.-Look, for instance, at some old ivy-mantled castle, with its towers and moat, and keep and gateway, such as at Lewes or Bramber; or at some picturesque ruined abbey, as of Netley or Battle, nearer us; or Fountains or Melrose, farther off. The very style of the architecture, in each case, tells pretty plainly to a skilful eye of the epoch when it was built; and also, wheresoever material alterations have been subsequently made in the structure, of the date too of those several alterations. After which ocular inspection, on turning to written records, there will be found in them by our antiquarian investigator a notice more or less full and particular of the revolutions it may in the meanwhile have gone through; and of this and that memorable event, this and that memorable personage, that may have been associated intimately with the place and building.-So, again, as regards any great and time-honoured institution: such, say, as that of our English far-famed political and judicial Constitution. As regards this, an intelligent

foreign inquirer will, on carefully observing the course of procedure in one and the other House of Parliament, or the course of procedure in our Courts of Justice, civil or criminal, quickly see evidence that the institutions have their roots in a far-distant age of English history. And, whether as regards that most characteristic feature in our political system of the representative House of Commons, or that most characteristic feature in our judicial system of the trial by jury, he will easily trace the one and the other a long way back, by means of written records, into the times of our old Anglo-Saxon kings; although then unfortunately having to regret that, on subjects so interesting, the actual first origin should lie veiled in the mists of that rude and illiterate Anglo-Saxon age.

Similarly, but more particularly, as on a matter of immeasurably deeper interest, let us now make Christianity, the religion long established in our land, and its historic evidences of truth, the subject of investigation. And, in order the more impartially and satisfactorily to do this, let us endeavour for the moment to lay aside our prejudices in its favour, whether from early education, or higher reasons; and enter on the investigation so as might some sincere and intelligent inquirer from a country not yet Christianized, in earnest search after a religion truly from God;* and with that faculty of Reason which God has given him,sitting as in the Judge's place, to weigh and estimate the evidence.

It is understood by the inquirer whom I am supposing, that this religion, like other religions, has its sacred buildings, called churches. So, entering one, as a preliminary to further inquiry, he looks and considers what it may suggest as to the origin, nature, and evidence for truth, of the Christian religion. He sees, then, at the entrance a stone baptistry, or font, (such as I spoke of in

*So Clemens, as sketched in the Clementines, a work of the second or third century. See Neander's Church History, i. 43. (Clarke's Ed.)

a former Lecture,) for the purpose of baptizing the infant children of Christian parents; that being the initiatory rite, he is told, appointed by Christ Himself, the founder of the religion, for their entrance into the Christian covenant. Then, at the east end of the church, there appears what is called a communion table, round which, from time to time, as he learns, adult members of the Christian community are in the habit of devoutly eating pieces of bread which have been broken by the officiating minister, and drinking wine which has been poured out by him from the chalice into a smaller cup, in remembrance, they say, (here again accordantly with Christ's own commandment,) of his body broken on the cross, and his blood poured out, for the benefit, in some mysterious way, of his disciples. Moreover, in the body of the church, he sees standing what are called a reading desk and pulpit; whence to a Christian congregation, gathered there for worship each Sunday, or first day of the Christian's week-a day consecrated by them as that of Christ's asserted resurrection after that painful death from the tomb,-passages are read and discoursed upon by the minister, from out of the Christian's sacred book, the Bible.-How long, he thinks, might there have existed such churches? How long such a worship? How long this religion? Whence originating? To which questions in the second half of that sacred book, called the New Testament, (in contradistinction to the primary half, called the Old Testament) -a part made up of sundry separate writings, some entitled Gospels, of history respecting Jesus Christ, some Epistles, as being letters from one and another of the more early Christian disciples to their converts,—he

finds what purports to be a precise answer. For they refer Jesus Christ's life, death, and resurrection, and the consequent origin of the Christian religion, to an epoch above 1800 years ago, under the reigns of the Roman Emperors Augustus and Tiberius; the local scene of those eventful facts being said to have been the then