of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea *," and till time shall be swallowed up in eternity. If we were at a loss for any other proofs, the firm establishment, and the increase of Christianity, would of itself be a reason, and a very sufficient reason, to establish the Divine truth of its doctrines.

The Evangelists were not ignorant that the followers of the crucified Jesus would meet with opposition: they knew, from the words of their Master himself, that they had to encounter persecution and reproach; they were aware that they might be called on to suffer death for his sake. They knew that a world lying in sin would deny the veracity of their accounts, and they felt the consequences of falsehood; they knew the value of truth too well to deviate from it in their relations. It was a difficult enterprise to teach men to adore a crucified Saviour, and to sustain in the face of an unbelieving world, such facts as his resurrection and ascension.

Those holy men tell us, that they witnessed the miracles of Jesus before his crucifixion; that he arose from the dead on the third day, and appeared to them repeatedly, and that they saw him ascend into heaven. All this they might have related as impostors, if they had stopped there:

* Isai. xi. 9.

but these men sealed their testimony with their blood; they died by cruel and ignominious deaths, with the Gospel upon their lips. "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," were the last words of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. But let us consider attentively the mode of their relations. They tell us of miracles performed in the face of thousands; that the death of their Lord took place in the presence of the whole Jewish people; and that all who believed, bore witness to his resurrection. Is this like a tale which had its origin only in the brain of the writer? Let us remember that many of those who shared in the blessings of his miraculous power, or of those who assisted at his death, and gloried in his sufferings, many of those who deridingly triumphed over his agony on the cross, as well as the witnesses of his resurrection and ascension, must have been in being at the time when the Gospels made their appearance. Is it to be believed, that these men, even if they had no regard for the intrinsic value of truth, would have exposed themselves to so easy a refutation; that they would have run the certain risk of contradiction from such a host of living witnesses? For even if we can imagine that the disciples of Jesus would readily have assisted in the promulgation of the tale, yet we cannot sup

*Acts vii. 59.

pose that the Roman governor and the whole Jewish nation would have suffered themselves, without reply, to be stigmatised with such cruelty, if the history of our Lord's sufferings had been altogether a fabrication. But we must leave this part of the argument, and proceed to examine some of those circumstances which we call monuments or memorials, and which are among the incontestible proofs of the truth of the Gospel.

Here we must bear in mind what has been already said with regard to the time at which each Gospel first made its appearance; remembering that St. John's Gospel certainly was not published until above thirty years after the resurrection of our Lord.

St. Matthew relates the massacre of the children of Bethlehem by order of Herod. This unexampled act of cruelty could never have been effaced from the memories of those who witnessed it. Can we suppose the Apostle daring enough to have asserted this, if it really had its origin only in his own mind, when we cannot avoid seeing how easily he might have been contradicted? It is impossible that any one blessed with the free exercise of reason could give credit to such an absurdity!

Some, perhaps, may say, that the Gospel was not known to the unbelieving Jews. It is difficult to give any credence to this conjecture: Christi

tianity had attracted too much attention for us to imagine any such thing: no one can believe that the enemies of Jesus, after all their malice and persecution, would have remained in ignorance of what his followers might relate of him. It is much more easy to suppose that they eagerly searched for any of the writings of the Christians, with a view to confute them. But we will allow for a moment that the Gospel did for a long time remain unknown to those Jews who rejected Christ it was at least, we must allow, communicated to those of that nation who received Him as their Messiah, and to the Gentiles who were converted to Christianity. These people were many of them depositories of the wonderful facts belonging to our Lord's mission, and the others must naturally have been most anxious to discover whether the relations of the Apostles were to be fully relied on; and had they found errors in their statements, they would with more readiness have rejected the Gospel than they embraced it. Another circumstance for our consideration is the recital of what occurred to Zecharias, on his doubting the vision of the angel, who foretold the birth of John the Baptist. The messenger of our Lord was too celebrated a character among the Jews for any thing in connection with him to have passed unnoticed many of those who had listened to his preaching, witnessed the austerity of his life, and

shed tears at his death, were, we know, in existence when the Gospels were first put into circulation; and they too could, and would, there is no doubt, have contradicted the Evangelists, if they had made statements inconsistent with the truth. Thus, the life of John, his preaching, the witness which he bore to Jesus,-" Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world;" the baptism which he administered; and finally his violent death, are all monuments of the truth of the whole. When we reflect on the multiplicity of miracles which they tell us Jesus did; that he healed the sick, opened the eyes of the blind, made the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak; that he turned water into wine; fed multitudes from a few small loaves and a couple of fishes; that he cast out devils, and by one word stilled the troubled waters of the angry deep; and, finally, that he raised the dead by a single command; we naturally ask ourselves, what could have induced these men to write all this, if they had not truth for their guide? Their recitals brought them no worldly advantage; they produced thein neither honour nor emolument; they obtained for them nothing but reproach and persecution: and when they wrote, there were those in being who could have given them an unhesitating contradiction, if their statements had been false. The widow's son at Nain; the daughter of