enlightened age of Augustus, when the empire was filled with philosophers, orators, poets, and historians.

It was a time of profound peace, when the temple of Janus was shut, and all nations kept, as it were, a state of watchful silence, waiting for the appearance of the divine person whom a universal fame pronounced would arise from the east.

It was an age the furthest removed from that credulity which distinguishes ignorant nations. It was an age of scepticism, when dislike of all religion prevailed to a great extent among the learned. The Epicurean doctrine had swallowed up all other sects; which maintained the indifference of human actions, made pleasure the chief good, and held the cessation of existence at death. The disciples of this philosophy denied a deity, or asserted such an ideal one as remains in a state of torpor and inactivity, heedless of the concerns of this lower world. No period could be conceived so little adapted to the exhibition of a false, and so well calculated to put to the test the merits of a true religion. They had wits sharpened by curiosity, so that they would eagerly enquire after whatever was new; but at the same time they were disposed to treat with contempt that which pretended to be supernatural. They

ing in that large tract, were no better than beasts, being ignorant of their Creator. But now, the passion and resurrection of Christ are celebrated in the discourses of all nations. I need not mention Jews, Greeks, and Latins. The Indians, Persians, Goths, and Egyptians, philosophise and firmly believe the immortality of the soul, and future recompenses; which before, the greatest philosophers had denied or doubted of. The fierceness of Thracians and Scythians is now softened by the gentle sound of the gospel; and every where Christ is all in all.”5

The question then is whether this success does not form a triumphant argument in favour of the truth of the religion? Can it be accounted for on any other hypothesis?

3. For observe the nature of the doctrine thus propagated. It was no speculative theory, cradled in the retreats of philosophical enquiry. It was a practical and holy doctrine, demanding an entire change of heart and conduct, enforcing a pure and virtuous life, inculcating many awful and mysterious truths, and allowing of no compromise with idolatry or superstition. It taught the unity and perfection of God, the fall and alienation of man by sin, the

4 A. D. 342.

5 Lardner V. 396.

condemnation and ruin in which he lay, the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ, the renewing influences of the Holy Spirit, the duties of prayer, faith, humility, spirituality of mind, mortification of the principles of evil in the heart, and universal purity, justice, and benevolence to our fellow-creatures. In short, it was diametrically opposed to all the theories of the philosophers, and all the passions and habits of the common people amongst the heathen; and to the pride, the fond notions of a temporal kingdom, the reliance on birth and external religious privilege, and the corruption of manners, amongst the Jews. Neither the Heathens nor Jews could understand, without a serious enquiry, the very terms chiefly used in the Christian doctrine, such as faith, righteousness, grace, salvation, the flesh, contrition, humility;" whilst the things themselves were in contradiction to their whole intellectual associations and moral habits. Christianity was a new and spiritual religion, in a corrupt and idolatrous world. It is not the propagation of a religion merely that we have to consider, but the propagation of such a religion with such rapidity, and to such an extent as Christianity, which marks the immediate finger of God.

6-Sumner's Reception of Christianity.

But, proceed we to mark more particularly,

II. THE OBSTACLES SURMOUNTED in this rapid diffusion of Christianity.

1. The persons by whom the religion was propagated, and propagated without human aid, were feeble and unknown. For who were the first apostles of Christianity? Were they sages of Greece and Rome, clothed with the reverence, and protected by the usages, of the nations to whom they came? Were they philosophers or augurs? Was it another Socrates, who proclaimed his intercourse with a guardian angel, and founded his doctrine upon the instructions of his celestial monitor? Was it another Numa, who asserted his communication with the deity of some sacred fountain?" No. The apostles were unaided, and for the most part unlearned, as well as unknown men. Of all countries which could have been selected for the origin of a religion, Judæa was the most inauspicious and improbable. The Jews were a nation despised and hated by the whole Greek and Roman world.

And what better hope had the apostles from their own countrymen, by whom the Galileans - as much despised as the nation generally

? Benson's Hulsean Lectures.

were by the Gentiles; and who saw the apostles, a poor, friendless, unconnected body, without education and without support, betrayed by their very dialect, going forth to condemn them for the crucifixion of Christ, to abolish all their ceremonies and privileges, and admit the heathen to an equality with them in the new religion.

Do

Further, how do these despised apostles enter upon their hopeless errand? Do they begin the work by gradual insinuation, by imperceptibly introducing their religion to persons of authority and talent, by entering upon long disputations, and working their way by reasonings, confutation, and human rhetoric? they come down into the arena of philosophic disceptation, and meet the wise, and the scribe, and the disputer of this world, upon his own territory? Just the contrary: they proceed in a way of direct authority: they renounce all the craft and policy of former teachers, and in the simplicity and openness of truth, assert the doctrines and duties of the Christian religion, and rest their whole cause on the divine aid and power.

Not only so. They had themselves no previous plan of converting the world. They had

yielded to fear and pusillanimity at their Mas

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