SERMON III.

THE CLAIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.

1 PETER iii. 15.-" And be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear."

EVERY man has a moral right to ask me what reason I have to hope for eternal life-for salvation is a matter of common interest. He has as much concern in the question about future happiness as I have, and if I have a well-founded hope of heaven, he may also have such a hope. As he has a right to ask this question, I am bound to give him an answer. As one cherishing such a hope, I ought to be able to state the grounds of it; and as I may be presumed to have a benevolent regard for the welfare of others, I ought to be willing to impart to him whatever knowledge I have on the subject: for if I have knowledge of so great a truth as that there is a way by which man may be happy for ever, I am not at liberty to withhold from another what may be to him of so much value.

The inquiry which one might make of another respecting the hope that is in him, might relate to two points. It might be either in regard to the hope which Christianity as a system holds out to man; or to the hope which in particular he entertains of reaching heaven. This latter inquiry would involve so much reference to personal feeling and experience that there might be some delicacy and hesitancy in replying to it; and yet, if proposed in a serious and candid manner, and with a sincere desire to know what true religion is, a Christian would not feel himself at liberty to withhold the information. Such an answer would be appropriate to a serious and anxious inquirer on the subject of religion; the reply to the question in the other form would be appropriate at all times. The one is that which would properly be stated in the free, confidential intercourse of friendship; the other is that which is appropriate to the public instructions of the pulpit or the press.

Whenever we come before you in any public manner, it is in some way to set forth the claims of the Christian religion.

Either by illustrating detached portions of its doctrines and duties, or by a formal argument in its defence, we seek to show you that it has a claim upon each one of your hearts, and that it furnishes a ground of hope for the life to come. It is not improper, on some occasions, to consider ourselves as giving a distinct answer to one who should make an inquiry of the reason of the hope that is in us, or what there is in Christianity which satisfies the mind that it is proper to cherish that hope. Such a position I desire to regard myself as occupying at this time, and I propose, therefore, to set forth the claims of the gospel in this way.

This religion has been in the world, inspiring these hopes, eighteen hundred years. At this period of the world, and after it has existed so long upon the earth, what is there to be seen in the system which makes it proper to cherish the hope of eternal life based on its promises? What is there, in the view of an intelligent Christian, on which the system rests as justifying hope in his own case, and as furnishing an argument to be used in addressing others to induce them to repose on it with the same measure of confidence?

I suppose that a man who is not a Christian, if called upon to give reasons why he is not, in the public manner in which I am to show why I am, would arrange his thoughts under some such heads as the following:- -the deficiency of the evidence of the Divine authority of the Bible; the ambiguity and uncertainty of the alleged prophecies, and the intrinsic difficulty in believing in miracles; the difficulties in the Scriptures, and in the doctrines which they have revealed; the fact that in the pretended book of revealed truth there are many questions which are unsolved; the bigotry, wars, persecutions, and wrongs to which it would be said Christianity has given rise; the little influence which it has on the lives of its professors, and the general character of the church.-Whether these would be the true reasons, or whether there are reasons lying back of these in the state of the heart, is not of importance now to be considered. All that I wish to say just here is, that it is not to be assumed by the friends of Christianity that these reasons, as they might be drawn out, have no force; and as little is it to be assumed by its enemies that they who embrace the Christian system do not see their force, and are not capable of appreciating it. It is a circumstance of some importance that not a few who are Christians were once infidels themselves; and it is not fair to assume that they have never looked at these arguments as attentively as other men.

Cecil, once himself an infidel of a most decided character, after his conversion made this striking remark: "I have read," said he, "all the most acute, and learned, and serious infidel writers, and have been really surprised at their poverty. The process of my mind has been such on the subject of revelation, that I have often thought Satan has done more for me than for the best of them; for I have had, and could have produced, arguments that appeared to me far more weighty than any I ever found in them against revelation" (Life and Remains, p. lxxxix.) "It is the registered saying of a man, eminent alike for talent and piety, that he never found such strong arguments against the Bible, in all writings of infidels, as had suggested themselves to his own mind" (Melville, Sermons, vol. i. p. 276).

Without impropriety I may be permitted to say, that in my investigations I have found things that have seemed to me to have much greater strength against the truth of the Bible, and that have given me much more perplexity than anything which I have found in the books of infidel writers; and that now, if I were to assume the position of an advocate of infidelity, I could draw out an argument that would seem to me to have more force than is found in any book that I could recommend to you. If you will suffer these remarks to pass without an imputation of vanity, I will proceed to state why, notwithstanding these facts, a man may see reasons why he should be a Christian. I will suggest several considerations, which together may perhaps furnish an answer to both the aspects of the question referred to in the beginning of this discourse.

I. The first is, because the Christian religion has such claims of a Divine origin that they MAY convince and satisfy the mind. I do not mean here such as to compel the assent of the mind; nor would I say such as to satisfy every mind in every state. I mean such as may satisfy a mind in a healthful state; a mind in the best condition for looking at evidence; a mind that shall reason on the subject of religion as men reason on other things. There is but one kind of evidence that compels assent—that which is found in the pure mathematics, and that embraces but a small part of the subjects that come before mankind. In morals; in law; in medicine; in mental philosophy; in political economy; in the mechanic arts; in history, we are content with another kind of evidence—that which convinces, not compels. The word convinces expresses the idea exactly—that which overcomes, or which gets a victory over difficulties and objections; which subdues the opposition of the mind to the truth; which furnishes evidence to remove the pre-existing reasons for doubt,

and which, as by a victory, secures the assent of the understanding. Now religion, from the nature of the case, belongs to this class of subjects; that is, it rests on the same basis on which are placed most of the other great interests of mankind.

I suppose that it can hardly be deemed necessary for me to attempt elaborately to prove the truth of my proposition—that the Christian religion has such evidences of a Divine origin that they may convince and satisfy the mind. If there is no inherent impossibility in that, it would be fair to suppose, unless the contrary can be shown, that this does occur, and that a man is a Christian because his mind is thus satisfied, and that this is the first reason which he would allege why he is a Christian.

Yet I have a few remarks to make in regard to this attitude of the mind, viewed in its relation to the evidence of the Divine origin of the Christian religion now after a period of one thousand eight hundred years. They may be numbered in their order, though it must be without illustration: (a) First, then, as already shown, the mind may become convinced and satisfied. This has been done in many millions of instances; this is now constantly occurring in the world. There are now great numbers of believers who have embraced Christianity only because they are convinced of its truth-for there is no other motive to explain this; and the arguments which have convinced them are the same which have convinced the millions that have gone before them. (b) Secondly, the evidence in the case has stood through the severest tests which could be applied; and Christianity exists now simply because the world cannot be convinced that its claims are delusive and false. Whatever may be inferred from this one way or the other, no one can doubt that it lives, and is carrying on its great movements among the nations, because the attempts which have been made to satisfy mankind that it is an imposture have not been such as to convince the world. The severest tests have been applied to it that can be-those derived from reason, ridicule, contempt, power, persecution; and whatever else may befall it, he who is a Christian rests in this certainty that his religion will never be removed from the world by reasoning, by ridicule, by contempt, by power, by persecution. If it is to lose its hold on the minds of men, it is to be by some agency which has not yet been employed; yet what that is to be, the mind finds it difficult to imagine. (c) Thirdly, it has passed, it may be supposed, what it had really to apprehend as the great crisis of its fate. For the great crisis was not, as is commonly supposed, in the time of persecution; it was to meet the developments of science.

Itself originated in a rude age and land, its great encounter was to be not so much with power as with knowledge; not so much with princes as with philosophers; not so much with Nero and Diocletian as with Bacon, Cuvier, and Davy; not so much with the powers of darkness as with the floods of light that would be poured upon the world, when the danger was that it might be found in error as all false religions are, and might, by excess of light, become eclipsed. That danger may be regarded as now passed. If it can retain its hold on the intellect of the world at the present hour, it may be presumed to have little to fear in the future. (d) Fourthly, it has shown that it has power to control the intellect of men, and to maintain its dominion there. That dominion it has set up now over the best, and the most highly cultivated intellect of this age, and it loses none of its hold by the progress which society makes in science and in the arts. It is undoubtedly a fact that the period has never been when Christianity had such a hold on the intellect of the world as it has at the present time, or when so many cultivated minds would come forth to its defence; and it has shown its power by securing that ascendency just in proportion as the mind of the world is developed and cultivated, and just in proportion as the best type of intellect becomes uppermost in the control of human affairs. For not only has it maintained its ascendency as the sciences have advanced, but, if I may be allowed the expression, it has shown a singular affinity for the mind that appears to be destined to be the ruling mind of the world, and that is more closely identified than any other with all that tends to promote the progress of human affairs— the Anglo-Saxon mind. (e) Fifthly; just one other thought under this head: it is, that the claims of the Christian religion are such as to command the assent of the conscience and the heart of men. After all, it makes its practical way in the world rather by appeals to the conscience and the heart than by appeals to the understanding. When men become Christians, they feel that they are doing right, and the conscience and the heart acquiesce in what is done, and they have no misgivings about it. Not so if they are not Christians. They feel that they are resisting claims which may be urged upon them at least with a considerable show of reason. They feel that it requires no little ingenuity to evade the arguments which are advanced for the claims of religion, and no little ingenuity to invent excuses for not becoming Christians. To become a Christian is a straightforward work, where a man is following the leadings of his own judgment, and conscience, and interest,