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,

recognise that fact and provide for it, is false and defective, is apparent at a glance. Indeed, the consciousness of sin has been the principal source of trouble in this world, and the profoundest and most anxious inquiries of men have been to find out some way by which sin can be pardoned. One thing is certain, that man cannot look calmly forward to eternity, as a sinner, without some knowledge of a way of pardon; some evidence that his sins are forgiven. Somehow, conscience has a power which man dreads, and sin, after being long committed and apparently forgotten, has a way of reviving in its power by the aid of memory which he would not meet beyond the grave. The world needs the knowledge of a way by which sin may, be forgiven, and individual man needs the knowledge of such a way, or he cannot find peace. The gospel has revealed such a method. It has done two things in this respect—one of which was necessary to be done, and the other of which was not necessary, and which is, therefore, a matter of mere favour: it has proclaimed the fact that sin may be pardoned; and it has disclosed the method by which it is done; and in both these the mind fully and joyfully acquiesces. Man finds in the gospel, in this respect, that which quite meets the case, and which puts the mind to rest. He finds a method of pardon revealed which displays the character of God in a most lovely manner; which does all that can be done, and all that is needful to be done, to maintain the honour of the law of God; and which is adapted to give entire peace to a troubled conscience. (4.) Man needs a knowledge of a way by which the soul may be made holy; by which he may be defended in the day of temptation; by which he may be supported in the time of trial; by which he may find peace in the hour of death-and he finds all this amply in the gospel. And (5) he needs a revelation of a future state-some assurance about the immortality of the soul-something more than vague conjecture, and loose and uncertain analogies, to assure him that his soul is immortal. I need not say that men have sought this everywhere and at all times, nor need I remind you how loose and unsatisfactory have been all their reasonings on this subject. To the classic scholar I need not say that if I should here adduce the reasonings of Plato in the Phaedo on the immortality of the soul, those reasonings which Addison makes Cato pronounce to be so well founded, there is not a man here present who would feel himself convinced by them, or who would not feel, if this were all, that the subject was left in utter and most distressing doubt: perhaps no one who would not feel that I

was insulting his understanding by insisting on these arguments -certainly no infidel who would not ask me if I had no better reasons than those for believing in the immortality of the soul. Of this work, and of Plato's reasonings in it, Cicero, in his Tusculan Questions, most feelingly and strikingly remarks: "I do not know how it is, but when I read I assent; but when I lay down the book and begin to reflect by myself on the immortality of the soul, all my assent glides away."[-Nescio quo modo, dum lego, assentior; cum posui librum, et mecum ipse de immortalitate animorum cœpi cogitare, assentio omnis illa elabitur.] But, as a matter of simple fact, this result does not follow from the faith reposed in the New Testament. The hope of immortality becomes a fixed and ruling principle of the nature, just as certain and determinate in its influence on the life as the belief that the sun will continue to rise, and that the laws of nature will remain unchanged. On the whole, and in a word, I look at my nature in reference to its capabilities and wants, and to the question whether the gospel meets those capabilities and wants, and I can see no deficiency-nothing which it has not provided for. Man is endowed with reason;-it meets his reason in the evidence of its truth, and in the nature of its revelations. Man has a conscience;-it discloses the way in which it may have peace. Man has sinned;-it reveals a way of pardon. Man pants to live for ever;-it tells him he will. He is made to be influenced by hope;-it has set the highest conceivable hopes before him. He has duties to perform ;-it has told him what they are, and how to perform them. He is to be governed by motives;-it has told him what they should be. He is in a world of trials;-it tells him how to bear them. He has an imagination;—it sets before him objects most brilliant-compared with which the most splendid descriptions of genius die away. He sees in himself some evidences that he has an immortal soul;-it confirms them, and raises this beginning of hope from a state of uncertainty and doubt when it produced no influence on his life, to most certain assurance, and makes it the most influential of all the principles of action.

IV. In the fourth place, I cherish this hope, and embrace this system, because of its undeniably happy influence on all the interests of man. I am aware of the objection which some may start here, and do not forget that I might be referred to the wars, and crusades, and persecutions, and horrors of the inquisition, and the miserable superstition in pilgrimages and the rules of the monastic life, which it would be said have grown out of Christianity. But I trust I need not argue this point. I am

speaking of pure Christianity; not of Christianity perverted and abused. I am speaking of what every man knows will be its influence if an individual, or a family, or a larger community, comes under its power. These things to which I have just referred are no part of the proper effect of true religion, and I presume that they who would urge the objection know that as well as I do. Every man knows what the effect of pure Christianity is ; and when its professed friends evince any of these things, its enemies are not slow to remark that they do not "live up" to the requirements and the spirit of their religion. But let a few. simple facts be submitted under this head in the form in which I am conducting this argument—that is, stating reasons why I cherish the hope that is in me. We who are professed Christians, then, look (a) at the influence of that gospel on our own character. None of us who are Christians have anything of which to boast, and there is not one of us that is not sensible of serious defects in his character, and of errors and follies over which he mourns in secret. But, as far as we can trace the influence of that gospel on our minds and hearts, it has not been a bad influence, or an influence of which we should be ashamed. We have found it giving us the victory over low and debasing propensities and passions; furnishing a check, in numerous cases wholly effectual, on what were before unbridled appetites; elevating our views, and expanding our conceptions, of the dignity of our nature, and of the objects for which we should live; raising us in the scale of being, and teaching us to aspire to fellowship with the more exalted intellects before the "throne;" removing the acerbities, and destroying the unevenness of our temper; making us willing to forgive our "enemies, persecutors, and slanderers," and to pray that God would "change their hearts;" giving us cheerfulness, peace, and "minds contented with our present condition;" purifying our hearts, subduing the stubbornness of our will, and making us submissive in trial; disposing us to kindness and affection in the various relations of life, and inclining us to look with an eye of tenderness and pity on the oppressed, the fatherless, and the sad. (b) We look again at the effects of the gospel on the minds of our friends-living and dead-and we find there, too, only the same purifying and happy influence. It has given the chief virtues to our living friends; it has done more than all things else to hallow the memory of those who are dead. A father, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, has none the less claim to affection by becoming a Christian; and we feel that whatever may be their native amiableness, there is not a virtue which will not be brightened, not a lovely trait