when infidelito longer confining itself to literary circles. has gone dow to the homes and the haunts of our peasantry, and seeks to prosecute an impious crusade amongst the very lowest of our people-we do think it cause of mighty gratulation, that God should have thus garrisoned the poor against the inroads of scepticism. We have no fears for the vital and substantial Christianity of the humbler classes of society. They may seem, at first sight, unequipped for the combat. On a human calculation it might amount almost to a certainty, that infidel publications, or infidel men, working their way into the cottages of the land, would gain an easy victory, and bear down, without difficulty, the faith and piety of the unprepared inmates. But God has had a care for the poor of the flock. He loves them too well to leave them defenceless. And now-appealing to that witness which every one who believes will find in himself-we can feel that the Christianity of the illiterate has in it as much of stamina as the Christianity of the educated; and we can, therefore, be confident that the scepticism which shrinks from the batteries of the learned theologian, will gain no triumphs at the firesides of our God-fearing rustics.

We thank Thee, O Father of heaven and earth, that Thou hast thus made the Gospel of Thy Son its own witness and its own rampart. We thank Thee that Thou didst so breathe Thyself into apostles and prophets, that their writings are Thine utterance, and declare to all ages Thine authorship. And now, what have we to ask, but that, if there be one here who has hitherto been stout-hearted and unbelieving, the delivered Word may prove itself divine by "piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit ;”1 and that, whilst we announce that "God is angry with the

1 Heb. iv. 12.

wicked;"1 that those who forget Him shall be turned into hell; but that, nevertheless, He hath "so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son"2 for its redemption-oh, we ask that the careless one, hearing truths at once so terrifying and so encouraging, may be humbled to the dust, and yet animated with hope; and that, stirred by the divinity which embodies itself in the message, he may flee, "poor in spirit,"3 to Jesus, and drawing out of His fulness, be enabled to testify to all around that "Thou, O God, hast of Thy goodness prepared for the poor."

1

1 Psalm vii. 11.

2 John iii. 16.

3 Matt. v. 3.

SERMON IX

ST. PAUL A TENT-MAKER

“And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tent-makers.”

ACTS xviii. 3.

THE

HE argument which may be drawn in support of Christianity from the humble condition of its earliest teachers is often, and fairly, insisted on in disputations with the sceptic. We scarcely know a finer vantageground, on which the champion of truth can plant himself, than that of the greater credulity which must be shown in the rejection, than in the reception, of Christianity. We mean to assert, in spite of the tauntings of those most thorough of all bondsmen, free-thinkers, that the faith required from deniers of revelation is far larger than that demanded from it advocates. He who thinks that the setting up of Christianity may satisfactorily be accounted for on the supposition of its falsehood, taxes credulity a vast deal more than he who believes all the prodigies and all the miracles recorded in Scripture. The most marvellous of all prodigies, and the most surpassing of all miracles, would be the progress of the Christian religion, supposing it untrue. And, assuredly, he who has wrought

himself into the belief that such a wonder has been exhibited, can have no right to boast himself shrewder and more cautious, than he who holds that at human bidding the sun stood still; or that tempests were hushed, and graves rifled, at the command of One "found in fashion" as ourselves. The fact that Christianity strode onward with a resistless march, making triumphant way against the banded power and learning and prejudices of the world—this fact, we say, requires to be accounted for; and inasmuch as there is no room for questioning its accuracy, we ask, in all justice, to be furnished with its explanation. We turn, naturally, from the result to the engines by which, to all human appearance, the result was brought round, from the system preached to the preachers themselves. Were those who first propounded Christianity men who, from station in society and influence over their fellows, were likely to succeed in palming falsehood on the world? Were they possessed of such machinery of intelligence, and wealth, and might, and science, that-every allowance being made for human credulity and human infatuation there would appear the very lowest probability that, having forged a lie, they could have caused it speedily to be venerated as truth, and carried along the earth's diameter amid the worshippings of thousands of the earth's population? We have no intention, on the present occasion, of pursuing the argument. But we are persuaded that no candid mind can observe the speed with which Christianity overran the civilized world, compelling the homage of kings, and casting down the altars of longcherished superstitions: and then compare the means with the effect the apostles, men of low birth, and poor education, backed by no authority, and possessed of none of those high-wrought endowments which mark out the

achievers of difficult enterprise-we are persuaded, we say, that no candid mind can set what was done side by side with the apparatus through which it was effected, and not confess, that of all incredible things the most incredible would be that a few fishermen of Galilee vanquished the world, upheaving its idolatries and mastering its prejudices, and yet that their only weapon was a lie, their only mechanism jugglery and deceit.

And this it is which the sceptic believes. Yea, on his belief of this he grounds claims to a sounder, and shrewder, and less fettered understanding, than belongs to the mass of his fellows. He scorns the narrow-mindedness of submission to what he calls priestcraft; but counts himself large-minded, because he admits that a priestcraft, only worthy his contempt, ground into powder every system which he thinks worthy his admiration.

Thus we recur to our position, that, if the charge of credulity must be fastened on either the opponents or the advocates of Christianity, then of the two the opponents lie vastly most open to the accusation. Men pretend to more than ordinary wisdom because they reject as incredible occurrences and transactions which others account for as supernatural. But where is their much vaunted wisdom, when it can be shown, to a demonstration, that they admit things a thousand-fold stranger than those, which, with all the parade of intellectual superiority, they throw from them as too monstrous for credence? We venture to believe that the phenomena of Christianity can only be explained by conceding its divinity. If Christianity came from God, there is an agency adequate to the result, and you can solve its making way amongst the nations. But if Christianity came not from God, no agency can be assigned at all commensurate with the re