and difficult circumstances, and make him act and speak in character without a failure, and everywhere with triumphant wisdom and consistency. To imagine such a life as Christ's, would be almost as great a miracle as to live it. And this miracle must have been performed by no less than four different writers. And then the miracle is multiplied fourfold, with this additional improbability, that four writers should have happened to invent precisely the same character.

Besides, the human mind, by a law of its nature, finds itself compelled rationally to account for every phenomenon which is presented to it. An effect must have a cause, adequate to its production. They who saw, this morning, the day spread itself over the earth, knew that it was caused by the rising of the sun, because it was dark before, but it has been light ever since. Such an event was the advent of Christ. His birth spontaneously became the greatest epoch of the ages. From it the centuries preceding are compelled to reckon backward, from it the ages since are made to reckon downward. It is inconceivable that a fictitious being, an imaginary creation of the human brain, could produce such a revolution in human affairs. The broad, long shadow of the mountain demonstrates its vastness. We hear at a distance the roar of the ocean, and we are filled with astonishment and awe. We arrive at its shore, and the mystery is all explained. Its mighty bulk, its tall, tumbling waves, as they thunder upon the cliff or break upon the beach, reveal to us the cause why the atmosphere is jarred, and the earth is shaken by the power of the ocean storm. So we are disposed

to wonder at the great changes produced by Christianity in the world. Nations which were Pagan became the worshippers of the one true God. Tribes which were savage became civilized. Religious rites which were absurd or obscene were abandoned. Amusements which were bloody, cruel, and indecent were renounced. The frequency and the atrocity of wars were mitigated. A gentleness and humanity spread themselves over all the relations of life, which poets had not imagined, and charitable institutions sprang up, of which heathen philanthropy had formed not the most distant conception. Whence did all these things come? Open the New Testament and the mystery is revealed. Contemplate the character, the doctrines, and the credentials of Jesus, and you discover at a glance the adequate cause of this mighty transformation. Look on Christ, the spotless and undefiled. Behold the moral miracle of one in human form treading all the paths of duty, amidst trial and temptation before which every other one of the millions of our race has fallen, yet without sin. Hear him speak as never man spake, promulgating a doctrine which surpasses in wisdom all that sages have ever uttered, and thus develop a religion which contradicts no law of human nature, lays a solid basis for society, and corrects, so far as they can be corrected, all the disorders to which humanity is subjected. See him authenticate his mission from God by healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, stilling the tempest, and raising the dead, and, more than all, returning to life from the rocky caverns of the guarded sepulchre, and conversing forty days with his former friends and disciples, and

you encounter a cause sufficiently powerful to account for the mighty impulse which was given to the human race about the period of the Christian era. We come to the stone which was cut out of the mountain without hands, which has ever since been filling the earth. No mere phantom of the human imagination could have done this. Nothing but a solid reality could have done it. Nothing short of just such a being as Christ could have done it. "The stone which the builders rejected, the same has become the head of the corner. This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes."

The narrative of the Evangelists has been read with immediate and spontaneous belief in all ages, on account of its consistency. I mean by consistency, its correspondence with what we know of human nature, and what we know of the persons with whom Christ was brought in contact. Not only was the character of Christ to be invented and sustained, but the characters of all those with whom he had intercourse. Not only was he to speak and act in correspondence with his high claim as the Light of the world, the Saviour of mankind, the Resurrection and the Life; but those with whom he associated, his friends and his enemies, his family and his disciples, must bear themselves in such a manner as to correspond with their enmity or affection, their hopes, fears, prejudices, and prepossessions. This is done with such perfect success, that the thought never crosses our minds of fiction or exaggeration.

In the Gospel of John we are presented with various persons, and groups of persons, in whose presence Christ is reported to have wrought miracles;

and then the conversations are detailed which ensued. I venture to assert, that there are not more lifelike pictures in the whole compass of literature.

I begin with the nocturnal interview with Nicodemus. Who does not see the wary old senator encountering the youthful Saviour, the one all caution and prudence, yet on the whole disposed to be fairminded and conscientious? The best part of him spoke out in the candid confession: "Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God; for no man can do these miracles that thou doest,e xcept God be with him." The worst part appeared in the fact of his coming to Jesus by night, for fear of open disgrace, since he held a high office in the national council. What more natural than that a candid mind, unsupported by decisive character and a courageous heart, should thus have attempted to make a compromise between his duty and his interest? What more natural than that there should have been many among the higher classes precisely in that predicament, — almost persuaded to be Christians, but wanting the magnanimity to avow themselves? What could be more appropriate than the language of Christ upon this occasion? It was addressed to a man of high culture, on a vital, and at the same time delicate, subject. The language is sublimely figura. tive, yet faithfully true. It mingles in due measure instruction with reproof. It is searching, yet respectful, calculated to impress and overawe a mind prepared by a refined culture to appreciate it. No human being ever read this relation without the strongest impression of truth and reality.

The woman of Samaria! Who that has read the

story has ever failed to believe that there was such a person, and that she spoke and acted as the Evangelist describes? How natural, under the circumstances, her wonder that there could be a Jew so liberal and generous as even to speak to a Samaritan, and she a woman! A circumstance is thrown in which heightens the credibility, because it adds to the naturalness of the scene, the woman left her water-pot, and hasted away to the city, and told the people, with the natural exaggeration of astonishment, "He told me all things that ever I did." How perfectly in keeping the surprise of his disciples to find him talking with a Samaritan woman, and how expressive of the awful distance which the exalted character of Christ had put between him and his disciples, that they do not dare to express their wonder by uttering a word! The Gospel has every appearance of having been written before the destruction of Jerusalem. What forger of fictions would have dared, if he had had the genius to do it, to risk his character and credit by uttering the sublime prediction: "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him."

The only other narrative of the Evangelist, which I shall have space to notice, is that of the raising of Lazarus. As this is the most stupendous miracle of Christ, so the scenes and conversations which led to it, accompanied, and followed it, are given with the greatest minuteness and particularity; and it is