hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed and turned unto the Lord. Such is the testimony which we have received to the fact of the sudden growth and prevalence of the Gospel, which also has been strongly confirmed to us by every succeeding account, from the age of the Apostles, to the present time; and upon which we rest one powerful evidence of the truth of our holy religion.

The fact being once clearly esta. blished, that upon its first and earliest publication, the word of God grew mightily, and prevailed; it remains for us, to account for it in the most consistent and satisfactory

manner.

We might indeed argue simply from the circumstance of that wonderful rapidity, with which the Gospel spread throughout the world, that the means, which effected so sudden and general a change in the minds of men, were of a nature beyond the compass of human capacity and power. Wherever we discover the power of man alone concerned, the effect is produced only by progressive steps, we perceive a gradual advancement in the work, until at length, by repeated endeavours, the desired result is obtained. With the power of God, a different law holds. He said in the beginning, Let there be light, and there was light. He spake the word, and all things were made: he commanded, and they were created †. With him to think, is at once to act. The operation and the effect are coinstantaneous. In circumstances, therefore, which present to our observation effects bearing in their character a similar promptness of execution, which exhibit the work as immediately consequent upon the design, it is a fair presumption to suppose the same divine Artificer, who spoke the universe into being, to have been the principal agent in bringing them also to pass.

But we shall not dwell on this argument. Though upon the strength of it, we might justly claim to our religion the authority of a divine revelation; yet as the rapid progress of the Gospel is a subject involving so many considerations worthy of our diligent attention, we need not insist exclusively upon the mere rapidity of its extension, as a ground for believing it to have proceeded from God; but shall derive a fuller confirmation of the same conclusion, by taking a brief review of some of the principal circumstances which attended that progress.

It will appear to us, that the human means employed were utterly inadequate to produce so sudden an effect.

For let us first consider the character of those, who were appointed to preach the Gospel to all nations.

The Apostles were men chosen from a low rank of society, and suddenly called to undertake their holy office, without any previous instruction, or formal qualification for the arduous enterprise set before them. They were altogether unlearned. Their occupations, which were those of men, who earn their livelihood by the daily work of their hands, were such, as necessarily excluded them from all leisure for literary acquirement, or knowledge beyond that of ordinary experience. All the learning they could have had, must have consisted in the profession of their religion, which exacted from them, as Jews, an acquaintance with the history of their remote ancestors, as well as with numerous rites and ordinances implicitly connected with that history, commemorative of God's singular blessings towards them, and intended to preserve the stock of Israel, a distinct race from all the rest of mankind. An education, such as this, only served to incapacitate them for the reception of any new truth, and to prejudice their minds against any apparent

encroachment on the religion of their fathers. A mere Jew could not but regard, with an eye of jealous aversion, any innovation, which tended towards removing the wall of partition, between himself and the Gentile, any change must have appeared to him, as a sort of political death, as an extinction of the high privileges which he arro. gated to himself as a son of Abraham. That the Apostles were more secure than any other Jews against such prejudices, we have no reason whatever to suspect. Nor again, are we at all authorized to suppose that they were men naturally gifted with high degrees of fortitude and constancy. On the other hand, they are not backward in displaying their own weakness, and shewing that they were men of like passions and inclinations with ourselves.How then could such persons, unlearned, prejudiced, and weak, as they were naturally, have availed to overturn the religion of the world. How could they have become converts themselves, much less have persuaded others to become so, but for the extraordinary illuminations of the Spirit, which shed on their minds a sincere conviction of the truth, and enabled them also mightily to convince others of that which they really believed.

In the next place let us remember who they were, in whose hearts the work of conversion was to be wrought. They were such as to present insuperable difficulties to the preacher of a new doctrine, unless he were endued with power from on high. That which alone would have rendered any unassisted attempt altogether unsuccessful, was the variety of persons to whom the word of exhortation was to be addressed. It was of no use to ascertain, by experiment, what was adapted to any particular case, for the number of different cases precluded the applications of that, which succeeded on one occasion, to another which was not of the

same character and complexion. No certain rule could be devised, no precise method invented, which might be universally applicable. What might have appeared pecu liarly forcible and convincing to some, would have been to others no better than sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Some had peculiar prejudices, of which others were entirely destitute. Some were hardened in the perverseness of their own wisdom; others altoge. ther blunted in the dulness of their ignorance. Some were highly civilized and polished; others, as yet untamed from the roughness of original barbarism. In short, the work of conversion was extended to people the most dissimilar in sentiment, character, and manners, and required an address, varying with each peculiarity of circumstances, in order to give the preacher any hopes of success, with those to whom it was directed. He had need, indeed, to make himself servant unto all, that he might gain the more*. As St. Paul eloquently pictures his own situation: unto the Jews, (says he,) I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews: to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak, became I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means

save some.

To

Thus to adapt the manner to the particular case, and to speak not only intelligibly, (which in itself to human power is an impossibility,) but also persuasively to all men, is a task, we must allow, which presents no ordinary obstacles. But besides the general difficulty of

* 1 Cor. ix. 19.

and suiting the word to the person and the occasion, there was also a peculiar difficulty in each separate case. Considering the hearers, as divided into two great classes of Jews and Gentiles, we shall observe, that from neither of these two were the Apostles likely to meet with a favorable reception. The Jews had already crucified the Founder of the religion. They had by this decisive stroke, staked their opinion, as to the truth of the pretensions and doctrines of the Apostles; they felt also, that as far as they were able, they had crushed the first risings of the faith, and done injury to Christianity, and its advocates: from a feel ing, therefore, compounded of couscious pride at their partial success, and of that malignant hatred which unhappily ever rankles in the breast of those who have done a wanton injury to another, a hatred, aggravated in their case by the ineffectual perpetration of their evil designs, they could not but be hostile to the views of men, who were openly engaged in the propagation of the same religion, which they had already exerted their utmost to suppress; who boldly set their authority at defiance, and (what was still more formidable to their opponents,) were not intimidated by threats or adverse fortune, from persevering in the arduous work which they had begun.

Nor were the Gentiles less indisposed to raise a similar opposition to the progress of the Gospel. These were either addicted to gross idolatry, or in reality had no religion at all. Those among them who had been nurtured in the worship of false Gods, and were accustomed to represent their fabled deities by sensible images and signs, with whom God was not one but many: and whose devotions were but a tissue of impieties and immoralities, were, of all men, the least inclined to listen to the teachers of a new creed, which revealed to

ship was not that of sacrifices and burnt-offerings; but purely spiri tual, and who required clean hands, and an upright heart, in order to render that worship acceptable in his sight. Those again among them who had cast away all religious sentiment, and were wandering in the maze of uncertainty, were not likely to adopt another religion, from the suspicion which they must have naturally entertained, that all religions were equally false. However the novelty might entice, yet the recollection of their former error, and the difficulty, with which they must have extricated themselves from it, were sufficient to make them cautious of again committing themselves on a point of such vital importance. Add to this, that Christianity must have appeared to them attended with personal trials and dangers; these they must have seen the Apostles themselves undergo; and they could not but contrast their own state of quietness and safety, with the hazardous toils and enterprise of the new converts. It appears in fact that the heathen nations, on the whole, were most adverse to the designs of the Apostles, and that it was not through any passive submission on their part, as to a matter of indifference, that they were ininduced to depart from the steps of their ancestors, and become the disciples of a more enlightened and spiritual philosophy.

How then, it may confidently be asked, could the Apostles have prevailed against such opposition of the whole world, by their own unassisted means-how was it possible for them almost to succeed in any one particular case, much less to have influence with such a variety of persons and characters? But it will farther appear how impracticable such an undertaking was to them, when we consider the nature of that doctrine, which they were appointed to publish to mankind.

Any revelation, which claims to itself the title of having proceeded immediately from God, must naturally be liable to great objections and difficulties. Whilst in things, which are the subjects of our senses, we often find the actual experience quite the opposite to what we had previously conceived; how much more is it to be expected, that in a divine revelation, which professedly treats of things which we do not see, the knowledge communicated should widely differ from all our antecedent ideas of its nature. Difficulties thus arising from our ignorance and misconception, would peculiarly beset the first access to belief, and tend to impede the to impede the progress of the faith. For the scheme of revelation, which Jesus Christ brought down from heaven to earth, though when closely examined it is found to be entirely consonant with reason, contains mysteries, as far beyond the stretch of human expectation, and out of the verge of common notions, as, when revealed, they are incomprehensible to our finite capacities and faculties. What could be more distant from the conception of man than the doctrine of the atonement, upon which our whole religion is founded! What more astonishing to human reason, than the notion of an incarnate God, suffering death on the cross for our sins, and rising again for our justification! Of the manner in which the death and resurrection of our blessed Lord must have been generally received, we have an example in the speech of Festus, who, in alluding to the accusation which the Jews had brought against Paul, says-They had certain questions against him of their own superstition; and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive *. This slight and contemptuous manner of speaking on the subject, sufficiently shews how repugnant such a doc

Acts xxv. 19.

trine was to all received notions. and expectations. We have an. example indeed in modern times, illustrative of the same point. When some Spanish ecclesiastics, who accompanied one of the expeditions sent out to conquer the newly-discovered world, attempted to convert some of the natives, and were proceeding to unfold the mysteries of Christianity, it was this. doctrine of God made man, and dying for our sakes, which scared them from the very threshold of belief. The simple Peruvian was indignant that a notion so discordant with his ideas of a God, should be offered to his acceptance, and at once disclaimed all allegiance to a faith, in his opinion so impious and, abominable.

From the great doctrine of the atonement, other doctrines necessarily flowed, and were consequently. connected with it in the same divine revelation, which are, at the same time, no less remote from all that it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive. The knowledge of the divine Trinity, of three persons in the unity of the Godhead, all distinct and equal, yet without division or confusion, though obscurely and faintly shadowed out under the Jewish dispensation, yet was then only fully revealed to the world, when God the Son descended from the throne of the Majesty on high, to redeem his fallen creatures, when being present among us, he declared himself as the Jehovah of the Hebrews, saying, "Before Abraham was, I am," and testifying that the Father and himself were one: when at his baptism the Holy Ghost appeared in the form of a dove, and the voice of the Father was at the same time heard from heaven, approving his mission; when, after his ascension, he sent the Comforter to compensate for his absence, and to guide his disciples unto all truth; when, by his

• Robertson's Hist. of America.