Roman province of Judæa. While, as regards these writings themselves, Gospels as well as Epistles, they profess to have been written not many years later; as being, one and all, the professed writings of disciples actually contemporary with their Master, Jesus Christ. In which two statements in the Christian books, viz. Ist, as to the date of the events whence the religion originated, 2ndly, as to the almost contemporary date of the writings recording them,-a date, observe, not in dark misty barbaric times, like those of our AngloSaxon kings, but in times of the most enlightened age of Roman literature, our inquirer cannot but instantly discern what important and almost decisive material offers itself to him for the verification of the truth of the whole matter.

Thus, Ist, as regards the fact of the existence of Christianity, with its professedly Christian worship, and baptisms, and sacramental communions, and recognition of the Bible books as the sacred and original books of the faith, nearly as far back as the era at which those Christian books date its origin, it needs no careful research on his part to see proof of the truth of this. Even visible monuments exist that carry back the evidence to a practised eye full 1500 or 1600 years: such as not a few ancient Christian Churches, with their yet more ancient crypts; and, still more ancient, the catacomb burial-places of Christians (as at Rome), with their touching Christian inscriptions; used at a time when heathen persecuting Rome allowed no better burialplace to them. And, as to written evidence, we find that European literature, all through mediæval times and back even to the Christian's first century, is interfused with notices of the religion and the worship; though, throughout much of the long intervening period indeed, in a form, and with ceremonies, very different from the simplicity of that which here and now in England our inquirer sees before him.-But most especially he seeks, as what may furnish more stringent testing of the truth

And

of the Christian statements, for notices of the origin of the religion, of its Founder's history, and of its primary progress, in some of the great Roman heathen antiChristian writers of that precise era of the first century to which the Christian books refer the event. what he seeks he soon finds. Alike Tacitus, Juvenal, Pliny, Suetonius, all well-known authors of the era referred to, allude to the Christian religion as a superstition which had not long before originated in a Judæan province, and had thence spread far and wide even thus early. Let me cite but one single passage, in illustration, (it is a most observable one,) from the greatest of Roman historians, Tacitus. Speaking of the Emperor Nero's endeavour falsely to throw the guilt of his own setting fire to Rome on Christians, as a body of men fittest for his purpose, because of their being then peculiar objects of popular odium, (the time was that of the great Christian teacher Paul's execution on account of his faith,) he thus proceeds: "The founder of the appellation Christians was Christ; a man who suffered death in the reign of Tiberius, under his procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, thus checked for a while, broke out again; and spread not only over Judæa, where the evil originated, but through Rome also, whither everything that is bad upon the earth finds its way."-So is the Christians' date of the origin of their religion, and of the life and death of its great Founder, completely corroborated by Christianity's early and bitter enemies.

Then, 2ndly, as regards the date and authorship of the New Testament writings, both historic and epistolary, (a point quite as important for verification as the other,) is there not an air of simple truthfulness in them which at once forbids the idea of fraud, or forgery? Is it possible, for example, for any man of reasonable and candid mind to rise from the perusal of one of Paul's or Peter's epistles, with the suspicion that, instead of their being really and truly written, so as they profess

to have been, by Christians contemporary and intimate with Jesus Christ, they were craftily written by Christian writers of a later period, forging the names of Christ's early apostles and disciples, with a view to the greater effect of the writings ?-Besides which, there offers itself in these writings internal evidence of truth and genuineness, quite unparalleled, I believe, in the history of literature. The Greek then used by Greekspeaking Jews, and of course by Jewish converts to Christianity, was of a peculiar character, called Hellenistic; and the mode of their thinking, and arguing, strongly tinged by the literature, with which they were most familiar, of the Old Testament. Now, on these points our inquirer finds that the testing well answers. The New Testament Greek is that of the nation, and the era. Moreover, that the several writings were nearly all written before the destruction of Jerusalem (i.e. before A.D. 70)* is unmistakeably patent on the face of the documents themselves, from the numberless references that they contain, some direct, some quite incidental, and such as no forger could have thought of, to the state, customs, and circumstances of the Jews then existing; circumstances which were all utterly changed by Jerusalem's destruction, and the consequent universal dispersion of the surviving Jewish remnant.-Further, the truth and genuineness of the documents he can otherwise test, by marking how far there is agreement between statements on the same, or on intimately connected subjects, in the Apostolic Epistles, on the one hand, and the historic Books of the New Testament, on the other; whether its four Gospel narratives which tell about Jesus, or Book of the Acts, which tells about the Apostles. And such, in fact, in the first place, does he find to be the agreement between what is said about Jesus in the Gospel histories, and what is said of Him in the Epistles, that a sketch of his life and character, on all chief points similar to *The only exception is that of the writings of St. John.

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that in the Gospel histories, might almost be piled from detached and often incidental notices of it in the Epistles. Again, coincidences, evidently undesigned for the most part, as requiring much care to search them out, respecting many little details of time, place, persons, and circumstances referred to, he finds traceable between the Apostolic Epistles and the history in the Acts, such as nothing but the perfect truth of the writings could account for.-Let me say, young friends, that it will be well worth your while to try the question for yourselves, when you have the leisure, by either process of testing. I mean, first, as to the agreement respecting Jesus Christ's life and character between the full record in the Gospels, and the passing allusions to them in the Epistles; secondly, as to the agreement on little details of fact between what you read in the Epistles and what you read in the Book of the Acts.* The latter has been admirably done (though not exhaustively) by Paley, as no doubt some of you are aware, in his "Hore Paulinæ."

Thus, you see, our inquirer will find himself forced to conclude, on all grounds of common sense and reason, that the several writings of the Christian New Testament, with their accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, and of the origin, principles, and first progress of the Christian religion, may be thus far implicitly relied on; viz., as having been written at the time, and by the persons, to which and whom they are ascribed.

And what the necessary inference as to that momentous question, the truth of their story? Of course, in the case of so marvellous a story as that which they tell of Jesus Christ,-for most marvellous it is, and indeed supernatural, from the beginning to the end, respecting alike his birth, his asserted miracles of all kinds during life, and, above all, his resurrection from the grave after death, and subsequent ascension to heaven, as if nothing less than what He had said He was, the SON

* See my Appendix, No. iii.

of GOD,-I say, in such a case, Reason will justly require a strength of evidence far greater to assure its credibility, than in the case of any ordinary kind of stcry. Yet does it seem hard indeed, and unreasonable, to resist this historic evidence. For there is no alternative left to us, after what has been ascertained, than either to suppose the disciples to have been deceived, or deceivers. Now that the Christian apostles could not themselves have been deceived in what they told about Jesus seems to follow necessarily from their long intimacy with Him, both before his death, and, as they report, for forty days between his resurrection and ascension. Again, that they could not have been intentional deceivers, conspiring, as it were, to palm on the world a wonderful story of their own invention about Jesus, appears from this;-that, if so, not only must they have had a superhuman cleverness in so managing as to defy all discovery of the fraud, but must have acted also against all those motives of worldly gain, or glory, by which real impostors are ever actuated: seeing that all they gained by it, or were likely to gain, was the sacrifice of everything that is most valued by men of the world; an incurring of contempt, hatred, and persecution, alike from their countrymen and from the Romans; and subjecting themselves to a life of labour, dangers, and sufferings, and at the last, very generally, to a cruel death. Nothing but the most full and deep belief on their part of the truth of what they asserted, and of its intense importance to their own and others' welfare, could account for this:-not to speak now of the moral evidence of truth (of which more hereafter) connected with their whole story and character. "That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, and which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life," said St. John, "declare we unto you."-Moreover if, as regards that most wonderful of all Jesus Christ's asserted miracles, his resurrection, the idea should suggest itself,-in spite