of Thrace, through the classic fields of Greece and Italy, to the Pillars of Hercules, and beyond the banks of the Saone and the Rhine to the shores of the Atlantic. That they had, at this time, for teachers, able and cultivated men, familiar with all the learning and philosophy of that learned and philosophical age, and that for sacred books, containing, as they averred and believed, authentic accounts of the facts connected with the origin of their religion, its doctrines and its precepts, they then had, substantially as we now have them, the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and most of the Epistles of Paul. These are facts, which, we suppose, no enlightened scholar of our day will undertake to deny or call in question. We might go farther in our statement of undoubted facts. But we have given all that are here essential to our argument.

Now here are certain great facts to be accounted for. I. A stupendous moral and religious revolution had been going on, not among rude and barbarous tribes, in remote and unknown places, but from the centre to the circumference of the civilized world, openly confronting its power, its learning, and its philosophy in the chosen seats of their influence, at Rome, at Athens, at Alexandria, and in the face of all that they could do to put it down; steadily advancing in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, and making its converts from among all classes and conditions of men, the weak and the powerful, the ignorant and the learned, from among those who had only mind enough to understand the simplest precepts of its faith, and those whose minds had been trained in all the acute and profound philosophical distinctions and investigations of the age.

II. This stupendous moral and religious revolution had as its author a Jew, who suffered an ignominious death in the reign of Tiberius, and who was regarded, certainly from the time of Pliny, or within about half a century of his death, with peculiar reverence by his followers.

III. Before the end of the second century (A. D. 175) or about 140 years after his death, the Christians, learned, able, and honest men, had what they declared had been preserved in their churches from the beginning as original and authentic memoirs of Christ, prepared by

his immediate disciples and their associates, giving minute particulars respecting his birth, his life, his death, and his resurrection from the dead, which writings we now have substantially as they then were.

IV. In his teachings, as received in these ancient writings, we find the purest system of religion and morals, the loftiest views of God, and the profoundest views of life, duty, and immortality, that have ever been presented to mankind; and in his life we find elements. of character so high and so pure, so gentle and so strong, so meek and so majestic, yet all combined with such beauty and simplicity, that not only has no one of the sons of men during the eighteen centuries that have since elapsed been able to approach him in moral greatness, but no human imagination has been able to create or to conceive a character of such mingled sweetness, dignity, and power.

Now these are facts to be accounted for. The extraordinary miraculous events connected with the origin of Christianity do not stand by themselves in the life of Jesus, or in the history of the world; but if they tower above all human actions and all other human experience, so were they associated with a character, with doctrines, and with historical events, on the same high level with themselves, transcending in dignity and power all the characters, doctrines, and events that have been recorded in the history of the world. They all belong to the same family. The features of all alike show the impress of the same Divine hand. If the miracles had stood alone, if the account of them had come down to us by themselves, with no divine life from which they sprang, no attendant teachings worthy of such an interposition, and no unparalleled historical events flowing from them as their source, they would have come to us simply as prodigies, with every mark of improbability written upon them. But now, the character and life of Jesus which we have in the same records, the doctrines which he taught, and the stupendous moral and religious revolution which in the earliest historical records connected with them pointed to them as its cause, are, at least, as remarkable as the miracles, and, apart from them, are, on any rational grounds, more incomprehensible, incredible, and unnatural than they. Men find it hard to believe a VOL. LVI. 4TH. S. VOL. XXI. NO. I.

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miracle. But unless we would overthrow all historical monuments, and efface as unworthy of belief all records of the past, we must admit the facts above stated relating to the origin of Christianity; and, admitting those facts, as all enlightened scholars do, we admit facts which point to a miraculous interposition as their only natural cause and explanation, and which without that interposition stand apart, an enigma and wonder, the most monstrous and incredible of all marvels.

The character of Jesus, as we have it in the Gospels, is sustained by instructions worthy of such a character, and followed by events plainly requiring such a cause. These are facts which no one calls in question. Now, take away the peculiar endowments of Jesus through which he walked upon the sea and raised the dead, and you take away the only adequate cause and reasonable explanation of his character and instructions, and of the stupendous moral and religious revolution that ensued. You take away the Christian miracles, indeed, which seem to you incredible while they harmonize with the attendant phenomena, giving consistency and probability to all; but at the same time you also cut off all this other class of facts from their only adequate cause, and convert them into miracles far more strange, unnatural, and incredible.

This argument for the Christian miracles is precisely the same as that which the theist employs for the existence of a God. We point to the marvels of earth and sky, to all the wonderful creations around us and above us, involving such mysteries of power and skill, and ask, how these things could ever have been brought into existence except through the creative interposition of a divine intelligence and strength? There are those who say that there has been no such interposition. But in saying this, they assert the greatest miracle of all. That all these plants and animals and men and worlds should be called into existence, and generation succeed to generation for thousands of years, that such marks of wisdom, power, and goodness should shine from every fibre of every plant, from the instinct of every creature that breathes, from the intelligent soul of man, and from the harmony that reigns through the heavens amid all their radiant forms, and yet that all these things should have

been thus made and kept in existence without any creative intelligence, the work of chance or of a law as blind and incomprehensible as chance, is a miracle too monstrous, unnatural, and incredible for belief. So, the records of Christ's character, instructions, and life, with the extraordinary events that followed, when cut off from his miraculous endowments, are, like the universe without a God, effects without a cause, and therefore, in themselves, the most incredible of all miracles.

We wish to dwell on this point a little more at large; for it seems to us to meet at once, on historical grounds, the whole a priori objection that is raised to the Christian miracles. The moral and religious instructions of Jesus, all admit, had their origin in Judea, and some time during the first century. But of all people then on the face of the wide earth, there was not one so formal, so narrow, and so exclusively national in their religious views, habits, and feelings, as the Jews. Yet here was a religion which at a single stroke emancipated itself from all forms, and, as a purely spiritual worship, with precepts of universal kindness and justice, offered itself to the whole world, and sent forth its disciples with an express command to proclaim it to every creature under heaven. All that the religious and moral instructors of our race, the prophets, priests, philosophers, and sages of forty centuries, had taught on those great themes, faded out, like earthly fires in the light of the rising sun, before the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. At his name, old superstitions bowed themselves to the dust, and never rose again. The ancient temples were deserted, their solemn rites abolished, and the victims driven back again because no purchaser could be found. The new religion spread itself over the three continents, and this universal dominion was a part of its original claim and design. Now, how, except in accordance with the Gospel narrative, could these doctrines, of universal application, and with their claim to universal dominion, have had their origin among such a people? Here is a miracle not to be explained away. Then, admitting the doctrines, how can we account for their influence? How could they remove the obstinate, blinding prejudices of the Jews? How could they create such intense zeal, and urge the disciples on with such indomitable

energy to sacrifice houses and lands, friends and kindred, ease, honor, health, and life, if only they could be the means of securing the salvation of others? Whence this sudden, intense, all-pervading and inextinguishable enthusiasm? Their leader had been ignominiously executed as a criminal. What encouragement, what hope, was there left for them, unless they knew that he had risen from the dead? Here, then, is a second miracle, repeating itself a thousand times during the first age of the Church, a miracle to which we find no parallel, and no distant approach even, in the annals of the world. Such doctrines, unless sustained and enforced by such a life, authority, and deeds as those ascribed to Jesus, stand not only without a cause, but also in connection with effects to which they are utterly inadequate.

But after we have allowed these two classes of miracles, first, the doctrines without an adequate cause, and, secondly, the historical results perpetually repeating themselves without a cause, the difficulties only multiply and magnify themselves before us. How could they, who, viewing their leader only as a man, proclaiming as his disciples the doctrines of a purely spiritual worship and of the purest morality, how could they, within seventy years of his death, sing hymns to him as to a divine being? How could they, whose mission it was to proclaim these simple and sublime doctrines, and whose power, according to the supposition before us, resided in the purity of the doctrines, so soon begin to mix them up with fables and falsehoods, and such distortions and fabrications as the miraculous acts ascribed to Jesus must have been? None but pure and honest minds could receive those doctrines with such earnestness, and with a purpose so unfaltering devote their lives to them; and how is it possible that pure and honest minds, receiving as the highest law of life the religious and moral precepts of Jesus, could stoop to interpolations and falsehoods, inconsistent as those interpolations and falsehoods must have been with all the solemn commands of their religion, and with all their previous religious ideas and conceptions? Here, again, is a new class of miracles, which violate, not an outward law of the material universe, but the laws of our mental and moral constitution.

But suppose the men inclined to make such interpo