the independence, as well as the variety, of the Christian evidence bearing on your conscience and persuading you to obedience.

4. I say nothing on the FORCE which these united considerations give to the whole proof. Force is a word far too limited; it is an overwhelming tide of conviction; it is a brilliant and refulgent burst of glory surrounding the Christian doctrine. No one of these various kinds of proof has ever been fairly disproved. They have stood, each of them, for eighteen hundred years, open to the scrutiny of the world. The separate force of each has gone on augmenting, by the events of history and the progress of the human mind in sound reasoning. The combined force comprehends every species of probable argument, sustained by positive matters of fact, which can influence man; and is receiving fresh confirmations by the fulfilment of prophecies, the attestations of history, the discovery of manuscripts, coins and medals of ancient times, in every age.

This force is best estimated by contrasting it with the decreasing evidences of every other religion or pretended religion. The proofs, such as they were, of the Heathen mythologies have long waned and gone out. The proofs of Mahometanism have been for ages abandoned. The evidences of the different idolatrous reli

gions of Africa or India, of America or the South Sea islands, cannot for an instant bear the light. The pretended sufficiency claimed by natural religion diminishes in force, every year, by the loud condemnation of facts and experience. But the evidences of Christianity remain in undecayed vigour, and augmented brightness.

In fact, the Christian religion is the only religion in the world which rested originally on decided and distinct and reasonable claims to the obedience of men, and which has sustained those claims through a series of ages, and exhibits now a bold and intelligible front to the observation of mankind. There never was a religion but the Christian (under which I include the preparatory Revelation) that laid any one just pretension to the faith of its followers.

And at this moment Christianity is the only religion in the world that advances any fair claim on our belief. The unsubstantial grounds of other religions sink and disappear before the least inquiry; those of the Christian increase and strengthen the more they are examined.

So that this question is between Christianity and no religion at all. If Christianity be not defensible, no one with whom we have to do, will support the pretensions of any other."

Paley.

With this accumulated evidence, which it is impossible adequately to appreciate—which, in its simplicity, its variety, its independence, and its force, baffles, like all the other works of God, the powers of man fully to develop-Christianity meets the moral and accountable being to whom it is addressed. Christianity, so excellent in itself, as scarcely to require any evidence, possesses in fact every species; and then comes to man, already under the antecedent obligations and natural bonds to his Maker and Benefactor; and says to him, 'Give me your attention; yield up to me your passions; submit to me your will; open to me your intellectual and moral powers. I will enlighten, and restore, and console, and bless you; I will teach you the source of your present errors and ignorance; I will lay open to you the whole of your malady; I will guide you to the fountain of salvation. Bow only your proud, rebellious intellect; pretend not to divine all the reasons of my conduct; submit to that state of probation, both as to knowledge and duty, which I assign you. Lo, I offer all needful succour. The aids of grace, the strength and illumination of the Holy Spirit are before you. Yield, then, the contest. You cannot overcome, if you persevere in resistance; you are bound by every moral tie that can surround man; you are in

my power; you cannot elude nor defy with safety my vengeance.'

Yes, my brethren, I hope I have, in some measure, gained my cause. Surely my pleading with you, for your own happiness, will not be wholly in vain,

I have touched on the grounds of the obligations under which you lie. Bear with me whilst I remind you,

IV. Of the PARTICULAR

ADVANTAGES

WHICH EACH OF YOU HAS RESPECTIVELY ENJOYED, AND WHICH UNSPEAKABLY AUGMENT THE DUTY OF BELIEVING IN CHRISTIANITY. For, besides those evidences which lie open to the universal attention of mankind, God has been surrounding you with circumstances of advantage for weighing these proofs, and for complying with the obligations arising from them. The country in which you were born, the events of life which a good providence has ordered, the strivings of the Holy Spirit with your conscience, the advice, and examples, and prayers of ministers and friends, have bound your duty upon you with additional

ties.

1. For You WERE NOT BORN IN A HEATHEN LAND, far from the knowledge of Christ, where no sabbath-rest invited you to religion,

no profession of the gospel in your country called your notice to its claims; but where all was buried in nature's night. You might have had your lot cast in such nations, with the millions of the heathen, and have had no means of information as to Christianity, but such as some benevolent missionary might bring you. But you were born in a Christian country. Religion received you in her arms; she took you, and admitted you into the Christian church; she washed you in the waters of baptism; she committed you to Christian parents and friends; she put the sacred Volume into your hands; she has followed you with her prayers.

Nor was it in a dark period of the Christian dispensation that you were born, nor in a country where the grossest corruptions of it prevailed. No; you were born in a pure and enlightened day; in a protestant land; under a government and laws which respected and upheld the Christian faith, at a time when the efforts of infidelity had been exposed by the horrors of the continental philosophy and the crimes of infidels and scoffers; when the facts as to the darkness and depravity of heathen nations had been demonstrated in the clearest manner; and the beneficial tendency of Christianity had been proved in the missions abroad, and the revived attention to Religion at home.