OK THl'. University of/ California. Received (y/\.t^^, > t8g^. Accession No. 7^0 6L^ - Clciss No. ^S"VAjLjciLi THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. BY GEORGE GRIFFIN, LL.D. IsilVERSITx 1 NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY. PHILADELPHIA: G. S. APPLETON, 164 CHESNUT ST. 1850. 3S^^^ Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by D. APPLETON & COMPANY, In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New York. •7^^ V^^ PREFACE It may be justly inferred from the title-page to this volume, that it treats mainly of the internal evidences of Christianity. For should the Gospel assume the form of a living, speaking man, and, like Paul before Agrippa, plead, with outstretched hand, its cause before the countless myriads of human kind, it would doubtless pJace its chief reli- ance on its own Sacred Pagp^. Nevertheless, the author will not deem him5elf precluded by the title- page from sometimes overstepping the line generally regarded as the h^undary between the intrinsic and external dep Q|cnf,s a^ lowliness and majesty — His humiliation surpassed what mere man would have vol- untarily endured or conceived — His piety — His benig- nity — His beneficence — Cases of Bartimeus — ^the sin- ful woman who anointed his feet — the prodigal son — ^his restoring Lazarus to life — his weeping over Jeru- salem, 128 CHAPTER VII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Wisdom of Jesus Christ — ^His sermon on the mount — Other cases of his unearthly wisdom — ^He was the pa- 1# CONTENTS. PAOB iron and personification of holy friendship — ^His parting interview with his disciples — His simplicity — His man- ner of teaching — His indifference to human fame — Si- lence of Gospel concerning his personal appearance, . 143 CHAPTER VHL THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Trial of Jesus Christ — His grandeur and humility — Inci- dents of his trial — Conduct of Judas — No other traitor ever induced by compunctious visitings to commit sui- cide — His remorse and self-murder were dying confes- sions of the innocency and godhead of his Master — Fall and penitence of Peter — Conduct of Pontius Pilate — The crucifixion of Jesus Christ — He spoke seven times from the cross — And as man never spoke — Bad men could not have forged the character of Jesus Christ if they would — And good men would not have forged it if they could — Extract from Rousseau, . . .157 CHAPTER IX. THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSFEI.. Miracles of Christianity internal proofs of divinity — Science of juridical evidence applied to christian his- tory — ^Writers of Gospel not deceived — Miracles pal- pable to senses — abiding in effects — infallible — no col- lusion — open and public — continued for years in pres- ence of friends and foes — ^Writers of Gospel had good sense and sound understanding — Deposed from per- sonal knowledge — ^Paul knew with certainty whether miracles of his conversion and those wrought by him- self were real — ^Writers of Gospel eight in number — Testimonies equivalent to judicial depositions, . .177 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER X. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. PAGE Writers of Gospel not deceivers — Truth has a manner of its own — ^Directness, simplicity, and ingenuousness of evangelical vv^itnesses — -Examples of their candor — Pureness of their moral character — Proved by their writings — ^by history — by the confessions of infidels — Had not primitive christians been of pure character, new faith would not have outlived its Founder — ^Writ- ers of Gospel consistent in narratives, doctrines, and precepts, without studied uniformity, .... 200 CHAPTER XL THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Writers of Gospel had no motive to deceive — ^Not moved by revenge — or prejudice — or hope of temporal emolu- ment — or desire to gain fame by tales of wonder — In- curred by their testimony certain obloquy, privations and sufferings, and probable torture and martyrdom — Conditions of discipleship foretold from beginning — Martyrdom, though not always proving orthodoxy, proves sincerity of victims, 216 CHAPTER XII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Auxiliary and supplemental witnesses to christian mira- cles — Gospel made miracles test of its divinity — Age of miracles continued about seventy years — ^During mi- raculous age all christians had sure means of ascertain- ing genuineness of miracles — Bore testimony to their genuineness by perilous adhesion to persecuted faith — Miracles the evidences of title to the promised inheri- tance above — Seekers after truth of Gospel would scru- tinize closely these evidences before giving up all to purchase inheritance — ^Witnesses to miracles thus mul- Xll CONTENTS. FAOE tiplied to many thousands — Each witness testified by his act as strongly as he could by his pen or oath — Ar- gument of Leslie drawn from institutions of Baptism, Lord's Supper, and christian Sabbath — New Testament and Old parts of same system — ^If Gospel forged, so were Jewish Scriptures, 229 CHAPTER XIII, huue's objection to miracles. Miniature of Hume's theory — ^Vagueness in his use of term experience — General uniformity of nature's laws proved by human testimony — So may any exceptions to that uniformity — On Hume's theory miracles not to be believed on evidence of our own senses — Evidence of senses not more infallible than well-sustained testi- mony of our fellow-men — Man lives in world of mira- cles, and is himself a miracle — No objection to miracles that they are designed to authenticate a system of re- ligion — Such miracles imbued with intrinsic probability — No impostor ever founded new system of faith on miracles, 244 CHAPTER XIV. THE MIRACLE OF THE NEW BIRTH. Regeneration wrought by special power of Holy Ghost against laws of our fallen nature — It is a miracle en- dorsing and authenticating Gospel — Each true believer " hath the witness in himself that he has been born again, and that Gospel is true — Miracle of new birth evidence to all the world of Gospel's truth — Each par- ticipant of eucharist makes solemn affirmation by the act of participation that, according to his best belief, he has been born again — Such affirmation equivalent to deposition in court — These depositions amount to many hundreds of millions — Deponents all deceivers, or deceived; or else new birth a reality, and Gospel from God — ^New birth standing miracle, . . . 259 CONTENTS. Xm CHAPTER XV. THE MORAL INCONGRUITIES OF MAN. PAGE Man in his moral being destitute of harmony of organiza- tion belonging to other creations of God — Is compound of meanness and majesty — ^at once brutal and godlike — Elements of his contrarious nature in collision with each other — Philosophy could not explain the enigma — Bible explains it — Man made upright and pure — ^but sinned and fell — Thoughts on the apostasy — ^The fall the only solution of mysteries of our being — Sin un- natural evil — Usurper of human heart — Man an enemy to God — hence he takes his name in vain — and wor- ships idols — Man not originally made a God-hater by God himself — Conscience and sin not twin brothers of same birth — Gospel's solution of mysteries of our being proof of its divinity — Cause suggested of God's delay in final punishment of sin, 280 CHAPTER XVI. THE PROMULGATION OP THE GOSPEL. Early and rapid spread of Gospel proved by Gospel itself, and by secular and ecclesiastical histories — Formidable impediments to its progress — Was exclusive and un- compromising — Opposed to prejudices and expectations of Jews — Country of its origin awakened prejudices of gentiles — Heathen superstition deeply entrenched in minds of nations — Retainers of polytheism roused them- selves to oppose invasion of Christianity — Recoiling from open argument, they employed foulest slanders — Polytheism closely interwoven with civil government — which was invoked and came to her rescue — Roman empire embraced whole civilized world — Sufferings in Nero's gardens specimens of other sufferings — General population joined in persecuting christians — Intrinsic impediments Gospel had to encounter — Opposed to XIV CONTENTS. PAQB pride, passions, and propensities of fallen man — Gospel made the moral reformation of its votaries a test of its truth — and that in an age of universal corruption — Human instrumentality employed in spread of Gospel inadequate to exigency — Its promulgators a few Jew- ish peasants — the most despised members of a despised nation — Contrast between martial conquests and the conquests achieved by Gospel, 297 CHAPTER XVn. THR SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Character of Gibbon as an historian — Would have discov- ered any defect in foundations of Christianity — Bound to give some cause of prodigious spread of Gospel — Denying divine agency, he assigned five causes merely human — His five causes stated — First cause — Zeal of primitive christians — ^Was met by counter zeal of Jews and heathen — Second cause — ^Doctrine of future life — Hell revealed by Gospel appalling and repulsive — Even its heaven not suited to tastes of depraved heart — Third cause — Miraculous powers ascribed to primitive church — Arrogation of such powers, without their possession, a fraud easily detected — Fourth cause — Pure morals of early christians — Their pure morals proof of efficacy and truth of Gospel — Gibbon's attempt to explain their pure morals — Fifth cause — Union and discipline of christian republic — No federative union of churches until close of second century — And before then Gospel had achieved signal triumphs — No event in history parallel to primitive spread of Christianity — Imposture of Mohammed — ^Modern missions, .... 324 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. CHAPTER I. JESUS CHRIST WAS A REAL PERSONAGE AND THE GOSPEL WAS PUB- LISHED AT THE TIME IT PURPORTS TO HAVE BEEN. Heathen testimonies — Passage from Tacitus — Its genuineness ad- mitted by the infidel Gibbon — Character of Tacitus as an histo- rian — Suetonius — Pliny — His letter to Trajan — Trajan's reply — Their genuineness admitted by Gibbon — Pontius Pilate — Usage of republican and imperial Rome for procurators of provinces to transmit to central government accounts of extraordinary events within their jurisdiction — Early Christian fathers con- stantly stated that Pilate had communicated to Tiberius an ac- count of Christ's trial, death, and alleged resurrection, with the accompanying prodigies — No heathen writer ever denied exist- ence of docvunent — Yet pagan Rome suppressed it — Inference inevitable that she suppressed the document because it would have proved the prodigies accompanying the crucifixion and the consequent divinity of Jesus Christ. Had the New Testament been found amidst the ruins of Pompeii, or on some desert island unmarked by human footsteps, the finder, though ignorant of its previous history, must have inferred its inspira- tion from the originality, holiness and grandeur of 16 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. its contents. Yet would he have been aided in his exploration of the Sacred Pages by proof, derived from some independent and sure source, that Jesus Christ was not a fictitious personage, and that the newly discovered volume, detailing his birth, life, death, resurrection and doctrines, had been com- posed by his faithful contemporaries. We have, therefore, deemed it a fitting introduction to our remarks upon the internal evidences of Christianity, to show, from the direct confessions or speaking si- lence of the ancient pagan and Jewish enemies of our faith, that its reputed founder actually lived and taught; that he suffered martyrdom under Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius Caesar ; and that the various books forming the Gospel were written and promulgated by his primitive disciples. To this preliminary object we shall devote the present chapter and that immediately ensuing. The great fire at Rome occurred in the tenth year of Nero's reign, about thirty years after the crucifixion ; and the tyrant was more than suspected of being himself the incendiary. Forty years after the fire, Tacitus, long domiciled in the imperial capital, wrote, under the form of annals, his history of the four immediate successors of Augustus. Speaking of the conflagration, and of the efforts of HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 17 Nero to divert suspicion from himself by substitu- ting in his place some feigned criminals, Tacitus says: " With this view he inflicted the most exquisite torments on those men, who, under the vulgar appellation of chris- tians, were already branded with deserved infamy. They derived their name and origin from Christ, who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate. For a while this dire super- stition was checked, but it again burst forth, and not only spread itself over Judea, the first seat of this mischievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common asylum which receives and protects whatever is impm*e, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were seized discovered a vast multitude of their accomphces ; and they were all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city, as for their hatred of human kind. They died in torments, and their torments were embittered by insult and derision. Some were nailed on crosses ; others sewn up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to the fiiry of dogs ; others again, smeared over with com- bustible materials, were used as torches to illuminate the darkness of the night. The gardens of Nero were destined for the melancholy spectacle, which was accompanied with a horse race, and honored with the presence of the emperor, who mingled with the populace in the dress and attitude of a charioteer. The guilt of the christians deserved, in- deed, the most exemplary punishment ; but the public ab- horrence was changed into commiseration from the opinion 18 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. that those unhappy wretches were sacrificed, not so much to the public welfare, as to the cruelty of a jealous tyrant." We have, with a single verbal correction, adopted Gibbon's translation of this memorable passage. The persecution under Nero and the genuine- ness of the passage from Tacitus are admitted by the infidel historian of the *•' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,'' w^ho says : " The most skeptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the christians, a sect of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. The latter may be proved by the consent of the most an- cient manuscripts ; by the inimitable character of the style of Tacitus ; by his reputation, which guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fi-aud ; and by the purport of his narration, which accused the first christians of the most atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous or even magical powers above the rest of mankind."* To appreciate the value of this authenticating * Gibbon's Rome, Vol. II. p. 399. HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 19 testimonial, we must bear in mind, not only the profound acquaintance of Gibbon with the events and writings of the Augustan age and his conse- quent capacity to detect any interpolation in the Roman classics, but also his virulent hostility to the faith of the cross, to which the world is, perhaps, indebted for his immortal work, and which would have impelled him to expose to detestation and con- tempt any imposture favoring the new religion, and to cast its obloquy on the christian name. Nothing but the affectation of historic impartiality could have wrung from him his concession of the genuineness of a passage so adverse to the hopes of infidelity, so confirmatory of the facts of the Gospel. The classic Tacitus was a stranger to the treas- ures of evangelical truth. It is not likely that he ever had in his hands a copy of any part of the Gospel. Had he known its pure ethics and sub- lime theism, he would not have termed it a " dire superstition ;" nor would he have condemned the primitive christians " for their hatred of human kind." Even Gibbon, in an ostentatious ebullition of assumed candor, declares : " If we seriously consider the purity of the christian re- ligion, the sanctity of its moral precepts, and the innocent 20 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. as well as the austere lives of the greater number of those who, during the first ages, embraced the faith of the gos- pel, we should naturally suppose that so benevolent a doc- tiine would have been received with due reverence even by the unbelieving world ; that the learned and polite, how- ever they might deride the miracles, would have esteemed the virtues of the new sect ; and that the magistrates, in- stead of persecuting would have protected an order of men who yielded the most passive obedience to the laws, though they declined the active care of war and government."* But Tacitus, though he had not studied the Gos- pel, had profoundly studied the annals of his country. Nothing in its history was beyond his grasp or be- neath his notice. He narrated facts with a pre- cision and accuracy never surpassed by a secular historian. His success in literature was equalled by his acquirements in the science of human nature. He was familiar alike with the court and with the closet. Born only about twenty years after the crucifixion, he was almost contemporary with Jesus of Nazareth. Upon his boyish imagination had been impressed the tragedy in the gardens of Nero ; his manly eye had watched the phenomenon of the Gospel's progress ; the very name of the new sect * Gibbon's Rome, Vol. II. p. 374. HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 21 pointed to their Founder ; no peradventure can rest upon the facts stated in the extract from Tacitus. That memorable passage is plenary proof that Jesus Christ really lived and taught and suffered martyr- dom under the sentence of Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius ; and that he was the Author of Christianity, which survived his crucifixion, and, having overspread Judea, had, anterior to the great conflagration, made its entrance into the imperial city. " The diligent and accurate Suetonius," as Gib- bon correctly describes him, speaks thus of the primitive faithful in narrating the events of Nero's reign ; " The christians, a set of men of a new and mischievous superstition, were punished." During the years one hundred and six and one hundred and seven of the christian era, Pliny was intrusted by the emperor Trajan with the govern- ment of Bithynia and Pontus, distant provinces upon the Euxine. He found the provinces, not- withstanding their remoteness from Judea, filled with christians, and in one of those years wrote to his imperial master for instructions how he was to proceed with them. The letter of Pliny and the answer of Trajan, now extant, are unquestionably genuine. Even Gibbon admits their authenticity ; 22 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. and thence argues in favor of the lenity of the Ro- man government towards the christian sect.* The letter and answer are familiar to every scholar, but they cannot be too often in print ; and as we may have occasion to refer to them in various parts of our argument, we here present them entire in the nervous translation of Milner : PLINY TO TRAJAN. " Health. It is my usual custom, Sir, to refer all things of which I harbor any doubts to you. For who can better direct my judgment in its hesitation, or instruct my under- standing in its ignorance ? I never had the fortune to be present at any examination of christians before I came into this province. I am, therefore, at a loss to determine what is the usual object of inquiry or of punishment, and to what length either of them is to be carried. It has also been with me a question very problematical, whether any distinction should be made between the young and the old, the tender and the robust ; whether any room should be given for repentance, or whether the guilt of Christianity, once incun'ed, is incapable of being expiated by the most unequivocal retraction ; whether the name itself, abstracted from any flagitiousness of conduct, or the crimes connected with the name, be the object of punishment. In the mean time this has been my method with respect to those who were brought before me as christians. I asked them * Gibbon's Rome, VoL IL p. 409, 410. HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 23 whether they were christians ; if they pleaded guilty, I interrogated them twice afresh, with a menace of capital punishment. In case of obstinate perseverance, I ordered them to be executed. For of this I had no doubt, what- ever was the nature of their rehgion, that a sullen and ob- stinate inflexibility called for the vengeance of the magis- trate. Some were infected with the same madness, whom on account of their privilege of citizenship, I reserved to be sent to Rome to be referred to your tribunal. In the course of this business, informations pouring in as is usual when they are encouraged, more cases occurred. An anonymous hbel was exhibited with a catalogue of names of persons who yet declared that they were not christians then or ever had been ; and they repeated after me an in- vocation of the gods and of your image, which for this pur- pose I had ordered to be brought with the images of the deities. They performed sacred rites with wine and frank- incense and execrated Christ, none of which things I am told, a real christian can ever be compelled to do. On this account I dismissed them. Others, named by an in- former, first affirmed and then denied the charge of Christ- ianity, declaring that they had been christians but had ceased to be so, some three years ago, others still longer, some even twenty years ago. All of them worshipped your image, and the statues of the gods, and also execrated Christ, and this was the account which they gave of the nature of the rehgion they once had professed, whether it de- serves the name of crime or error ; namely, that they were accustomed on a stated day to meet before dayHght, and to repeat among themselves a hymn to Christ as to a god, 24 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. and to bind themselves by an oath with an obligation of not committing any wickedness, but on the contrary, of ab- staining from thefts, robb^ies and 'adulteries ; also of not violating their promise, or denying a pledge ; after which it was their custom to separate and meet again at a pro- miscuous, harmless meal; from which last practice they, however, desisted after the pubHcation of my edict, in which, agreeably to your orders, I forbade any societies of that sort. On which account I judged it the more neces- sary to inquire by torture from two females, who were said to be deaconesses, what is the real truth, but nothing could I collect, except a depraved and excessive supersti- tion. Deferring, therefore, any further investigation, I de- termined to consult you. For the number of culprits is so great as to call for serious consultation. Many persons are informed against of every age, and of both sexes, and more still will be in the same situation. The contagion of the superstition hath spread, not only through cities, but even villages and the country. Not that I think it impossible to check and to connect it. The success of my endeavors hitherto forbids such desponding thoughts ; for the temples, once almost desolate, begin to be frequented ; and the sa- cred solemnities, which had long been intermitted, are now attended afresh ; and the sacrificial victims are now sold everywhere, which could once scarce find a purchaser. Whence I conclude that many might be reclaimed were the hope of impunity on repentance absolutely confirmed." ^m- k HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 25 TRAJAN TO PLINY. " You have done perfectly riglit, my dear Pliny, in tlie inquiry which you have made concerning christians. For truly no one general rule can be laid down, which will apply itself to all cases. These people must not be sought after. If they are brought before you and convicted, let them be capitally punished ; yet with this restriction, that if any renounce Christianity and evidence his sincerity by suppHcating our gods, however suspected he may be for the past, he shall obtain pardon for the future on his re- pentance. But anonymous libels in no case ought to be attended to ; for the precedent would be of the worst sort, and perfectly incongruous to the maxims of my govern- ment." The letter of Pliny was written about seventy years after the crucifixion ; and it carries along with it plenary demonstration that, at the time of its date, Christianity had thoroughly pervaded the provinces of which he was governor. He says ; "Many persons are informed against of every age and of both sexes, and more still will be in the same situation. The contagion of the superstition hath spread not only through cities, but even villages and the country." He affirms that until the adop- tion of his vigorous measures against the innova^ ting faith, the temples of the polytheists had been ■■ ■■> :^ 2 26 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. deserted, their profane solemnities long intermitted, and that the sacrificial victims could scarcely have found a purchaser. This strong language is used without limitation ; it is applied, not to particular sections alone, but to the entire countries under his jurisdiction. Nor did Pliny intimate that the evangelical re- ligion had just risen, like a sudden meteor, above the horizon. He reports that some of the prison- ers, though they had denied under the terrors of threatened death that they were then christians, admitted that they had been such more than twenty years before. It follows that more than twenty years before their examination, and therefore with- in the first half-century after the crucifixion, the Gospel had accomplished its triumphal march even to the sequestered borders of the Black Sea. The letter of the Roman governor caused no surprise at the imperial court. The emperor treated " the contagion" of Pontus and Bithynia, not as a strange phenomenon peculiar to those provinces, but as a noxious poison common to his vast do- minions. Pliny's letter illustrates other important truths. It shows that the christian church revered Jesus Christ as its Founder, and worshipped him as God ; « HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 27 that it had its sabbaths, its officers, its regular assembhes, its code of theism and of ethics; that its doctrines and precepts enjoined abstinence from thefts, robberies, adulteries, violations of promise, and all manner of wickedness ; and that the real believer was ever ready to endure the torture and the death, rather than abjure his faith. The correspondence between the provincial gov- ernor and his imperial master does not speak in terms of the existence of any christian writings. But the inference is strong, that, at that enlightened period, a religious system so completely organized, embodying such a code of doctrinal and practical truths, professing to be proclaimed for the instruc- tion and salvation of mankind, would not have been allowed to rest for seventy years after the death of its Founder on mere oral communication. The Augustan age ended not with the life of Augustus ; but, like the Elizabethan era, continued long after the death of the sovereign from whom it derived its name. It was an age distinguished for the written effusions of mind. For the sword of the iron republic had been substituted the pen of the lettered empire. It would have been passing strange had christian zeal and intelligence left un- recorded, for three score years and ten, the birth, 28 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. teachings, miracles, death and resurrection of the Son of God. The antiquity of the evangehcal writings is a necessary deduction from the corres- pondence between Pliny and the sovereign of the Roman world. It was the immemorial usage of republican and imperial Rome, that each governor of a province should transmit to the central authority of the state official accounts of all extraordinary events occur- ring within his jurisdiction. Of this custom the letter from Pliny to Trajan is a memorable ex- ample. Such usage is necessarily incident to all states possessing conquered or detached provinces. If the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a reality, it was an extraordinary event. He had claimed to be a divine person, and the author of stupendous miracles ; his disciples publicly announced his res urrection from the dead. These things were with- in the knowledge of Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. That he officially communicated to Ti- berius the tale of wonders, is a conclusion to be drawn from the circumstances of -the case, without the aid of extraneous evidence. Had he omitted the communication he would have violated the an- cient and universal usages of the commonwealth and of the empire ; he would have been guilty of a HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. ' . 29 gross breach of official duty ; he would have been justly amenable to the censure of the emperor, and to ignominious expulsion from office. The pre- sumption that public magistrates have duly per- formed the obligations imposed on them by their respective stations, is a fundamental principle of universal jurisprudence. But the intrinsic presumption that Pilate trans- mitted to the Roman government his official report of the life, death, and alleged resurrection of Jesus Christ is confirmed by extraneous evidence. The fact of his report is repeatedly averred by the early christian fathers. Speaking of the wonderful dem- onstrations which agcompanied the crucifixion of our Lord, Justin Martyr, in his first Apology for Christianity, addressed to the authorities of the Ro- man empire, about the year one hundred and forty of the christian era, thus speaks ; " And that these things were so done, you may know from the acts written in the time of Pontius Pilat^."* Tertullian in his Apology for the new faith, also addressed to the Roman government, and written ^bout the year one hundred and, ninety-eight, speaks thus; " Of all these things relating to Christ, Pilate, him- * Justin Mariyr, Apol prftna, p. 65, 12. 30 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. self in conscience already a christian, sent an ac- count to Tiberius, then emperor."* And else- where, in the same chapter, he thus appeals to the pagan authorities ; " Search your own public doc- uments. At the moment of Christ's death, the light departed from the sun, and the land was darkened at noon ; which wonder is related in your own annals, and is preserved in your archives to this day." Eusebius, who wrote about the year three hun- dred and fifteen, speaks in this manner ; " When the wonderful resurrection of our Saviour and his ascension to heaven were in the mouths of all men, it being an ancient custom for governors of prov- inces to write to the emperor and give him an account of new and remarkable occurrences, that he might not be ignorant of anything, Pilate in- formed the emperor of the resurrection of Christ, and likewise of his reputed miracles, and that, being raised up after he had been put to death, he was already believed by many to be a god.f There- port of Pontius Pilate to Tiberius is also affirmed by Epiphanius, Chrisostom, Orosius, and Gregory of Tours. * Tertullian, ApoL c. 21. f Euseb. EccL Hist. lib. 11, c. 2. HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 31 Modern infidels have affected to sneer at these statements of the christian fathers. But the state- ments were never contradicted by the heathen in- fidels of the first four centuries. Celsus attempted an elaborate confutation of the new faith, and pub- lished his treatise about the year one hundred and seventy-five, and thirty-five years after the appear- ance of Justin Martyr's first Apology. The pagan unbeliever had the christian work before him, and must have studied it diligently, page by page and sentence by sentence. Why did not the learned and vindictive Celsus meet and contradict the bold appeal of Justin Martyr to " the acts written in the time of Pontius Pilate?" He did not because he dared not. By such contradiction he would have come into direct collision with the public records of the empire. About the year two hundred and seventy, and a little more than seventy years after the publication of Tertullian's Apology, heathen infidelity, personi- fied by Porphyry, one of its most renowned cham- pions, made its second great effort to write down the faith of the cross. Open before the eyes of Porphyry lay the writings of the two christian apologists ; his ears he could not close to the chal- lenge of Tertullian, " Search your own public doc- 32 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. uments." How overwhelming must have been the triumph of the pagan combatant could he have averred and shown that the imperial archives con- tained not the pretended report from the procurator of Judea. How would the christian world have been humbled and confounded as it gazed on the public immolation of its two favorite advocates by infidel hands, not as martyrs to the truth, but as fabricators of falsehood! Yet upon the pressing emergency, the wary Porphyry stood speechless as the grave ! In the fourth century, and about fifty years after Eusebius had reiterated the standing appeal of evangelical antiquity to Pilate's official report of the crucifixion, the apostate Julian brandished his im- perial pen against the new religion. He was an accomplished scholar and a profound statesman. His own experience had impressed on his mind the ancient and universal usage of the empire, requir- ing from governors of provinces official reports of such extraordinary events as marked their admin- istrations. He had before him the works of Justin Martyr, of Tertullian and of Eusebius. He could not be ignorant that the appeal of the faithful to the report of Pontius Pilate had been sounded and echoed and reverberated along the track of centu- HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 33 ries. He must have felt the pressure of the appeal. Yet even the emperor Julian passed over in omi- nous silence the subject of that memorable letter from the governor of Judea to his imperial mas- ter, which, unless subtracted by pagan cunning, still survived a speaking witness from his own ar- chives. It is a principle of universal justice that, if a party rightfully demands the production of a docu- ment in the possession of his adversary, its non- production creates a decisive presumption against the party withholding it. For its suppression must have been prompted by views incompatible with the development of truth. This principle strongly commends itself to the common sense of mankind. The official report of the crucifixion, transmitted by Pilate to Tiberius, was a document perhaps de- cisive of the great controversy between Christianity and unbelief It was in the hostile custody of heathen Rome, who ought to have held it for the common benefit of all her subjects. The advocates of primitive Christianity appealed to the document, and demanded its production, and named the place of its custody, and stated its momentous contents. The champions of paganism remained dumb as the idols they worshipped. This silence, continued for 2* 34 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. centuries, was a virtual confession in that vast temple of justice, whose circumference was earth and whose canopy was heaven — made in the pres- ence of men, angels and God — binding through all ages of time — that the christian asseverations of the existence and contents of the document were " the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." The scriptural account of the conduct of Pon- tius Pilate while sitting in his judgment hall, forti- fies the belief that he must have sent to his impe- rial sovereign just such a report as the early chris- tian fathers affirmed. At the close of the trial of his Creator, he could not choose but " believe and tremble." Then followed the rending of the rocks, the quaking of the earth and the darkening of the sun, so demonstrative of the divinity of the Cruci- fied. To none of these events was the Roman governor a stranger. Nor could he have closed his ears to the startling intelligence that the dead had risen to life. In his communication to the im- perial government, he would not have been likely to suppress the astounding miracles, or his own conviction that the condemned, the executed, the resuscitated Martyr was the Son of God. No wonder that heathen Rome suppressed, and finally HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 35 destroyed the procurator's official report. For, to the impartial students of truth, the report of Pontius Pilate would have demonstrated, not only the existence and martyrdom of Jesus Christ, but even his very godhead. Modern unbelief may possibly suggest that, the original works of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian be- ing lost, we have no grounds at the present day for the conclusion that they did not controvert Pilate's alleged letter to Tiberius. But such conclusion is sustained, not only by the copious fragments of those infidel works transcribed and preserved in various christian writings, but also by the control- ling fact that, while the works of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian remained entire, christian authors went on for centuries reiterating the charge of the letter from the procurator of Judea to the Roman emperor, without the slightest intimation that the existence of the letter had ever been controverted or doubted. Had Celsus denied the charge of Justin Martyr, TertuUian, who wrote about twen- ty-five years after Celsus, would not have dared to repeat it, without some allusion to its nega- tion. Had Porphyry denied the charge, it would not have been again unqualifiedly repeated by Eusebius, who wrote about forty-five years after 36 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Porphyry. And had the emperor Julian about the year three hundred and sixty, denied the charge, it would not have been still repeated by Epipha- nius, who wrote about the year three hundred and seventy, and by Chrisostom, who wrote about the year four hundred, and by Orosius, who wrote about the year four hundred and twenty, and by Gregory of Tours, who wrote about the year five hundred and seventy. Even when Epiphanius, Chrisostom, Orosius and Gregory gave their writings to the world, the works of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian were still in being. If the existence of the alleged letter from Pilate to Tiberius had been controverted by Celsus, Porphyry, or Julian, the two former the semi- official organs, and the latter the imperial sovereign of the pagan world, no christian author would afterwards publicly affirm its existence without some reference to its having been denied. The omission of such reference would have betrayed a want of honor and honesty ; and the breach of good faith must have led to detection and exposure by heathen or Jewish enemies, to the lasting dis- credit of the christian name. Upon the supposi- tion of its having been denied in the face of the world the existence of the letter was no longer an HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 37 unquestioned fact ; and its subsequent averment as an unquestioned fact would have impugned the principles of common integrity. Policy, if not con- science, would have deterred any christian author from the commission of such a barefaced breach of candor. It is, then, an inevitable conclusion, that the official report of Pilate to the Roman emperor was not controverted by any pagan author of an- cient times. There was a rumor in the early church that, upon receiving the report from the governor of Judea, Tiberius proposed to the senate that Jesus Christ should be enrolled on the calendar of Roman gods ; and that the senate declined the proposition because they held it to be their privilege, and not the prerogative of the emperor, to nominate the candidates for deification ; and more especially be- cause Tiberius had himself declined the acceptance of that honor from the Roman senate. Some mod- ern writers, deeming the rumor improbable, have sought thence to cast a shade of suspicion upon the fact of Pilate's report. But between the fact and the floating rumor, no real affinity exists. The rumor was probably true; but, if unfounded, its falsity affects not the impregnable reality of the official report. Faith in history, if disturbed by 38 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. unimportant errors in collateral details, would be in danger of degenerating into universal and cheer- less skepticism. Our argument rests, not on the subsequent acts of Tiberius or of his senate, but on the original letter of Pontius Pilate, written in his official ca- pacity and filed in the archives of the empire. It is the Roman procurator of Judea — who presided at the trial of Him of Nazareth, and marked well his godlike look and bearing — who felt the shudder- ing of the earth, and saw the obscuration of the physical sun when the Sun of righteousness expired — that we invoke as a paramount witness to the being and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the truth of our holy religion. Pontius Pilate has indeed gone to his long account. But he left his solemn attestation behind him — signed by his own hand — authenticated under his oath of office — recording at the time and place of their occurrence the as- tounding demonstrations of which his own senses had taken cognizance. That this transcendent document, required by the immemorial usages of republican and imperial Rome, was drawn, signed, sealed and sent to the emperor, and lodged in the depository of the national records, was expressly and continually affirmed by the primitive church, HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 39 and unequivocally admitted by the expressive si- lence of heathen antiquity. We will venture to suggest, though with defer- ence, that possibly the argument derived from the official communication of Pontius Pilate to the Ro- man emperor, may not have been pressed by mod- ern advocates of the Gospel, quite as strenuously as its importance would seem to justify. In our estimate, that communication holds a conspicuous place among the christian proofs. CHAPTER II. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Further heathen testimonies — Celsus wrote against Christianity about one century after promulgation of Gospel — Extracts from his works — Admits that Jesus Christ was a real personage — And that Goppel was written by his primitive disciples — Admits • generally the gospel history — Virtually admits its miracles — Doctor Doddridge's estimate of the extracts from Celsus — Por- phyry wrote against Christianity about the year two hundred and seventy — Speaks of Jesus Christ as a real personage — And of Gospel as written by his primitive disciples — Some extracts from his works — Emperor Julian wrote against Christianity about the year three hundred and sixty — Admits reality of Jesus Christ and antiquity of Gospel — Extracts from his works — Jewish testimonies — Josephus — The Mishna — The Talmuds. The demonstration from heathen testimonials that Jesus Christ was not a fictitious personage, and that the Gospel was composed and published by his faithful contemporaries, will be rendered more perfect by a closer review of the fragments trans- mitted to us from the works of the three distin- guished unbelievers who wrote elaborate treatises against Christianity during the earliest centuries of the church. We shall now present copious ex- tracts from these fragments. Most of the proposed HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 41 extracts are irreverent ; and some of them are pro- fane. We should not stain our pages with quota- tions offensive to pious feehng, were it not for the consideration that we thence derive, even from the confessions of the primitive enemies to our holy faith, overwhelming evidence, never to be gain- sayed even by skepticism itself, that the Gospel was not the forgery of an age posterior to its as- sumed date, and that its Founder actually lived and taught and suffered. We hope thus to transmute into healthful aliment the poison of infidel impiety. There is a potency in confessions from hostile lips, deliberately and intelligently made, which place them almost at the head of human proofs. " Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee/' was a process of conviction strikingly approved by him who spake as never man spake. The pagan Celsus published his voluminous and labored argument against Christianity about the year one hundred and seventy-five of the christian era. It was called " The True Word." About sixty years after its appearance Origen wrote his memorable response in eight books. The treatise of Celsus has perished ; but while it remained in existence, Origen copied from it into his answer numerous passages. Through the answer of Ori- 42 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE, gen we are made acquainted with the work of Celsus. It is a rule of natural and universal jurisprudence, that whenever the original is lost, its contents may- be shown by a verified copy or parol proof. This rule is a vital element of the social structure. No- thing human is beyond the reach of casualty. Mer- cantile instruments, sealed bonds, testamentary bequests, title papers to real estate, legislative rec- ords, may all be destroyed by conflagration or perish in the current of time. Unless lost origi- nals could be supplied by parol proof or verified copies, society must relapse into its primeval dis- organization. No copy could be better authenticated than are the extracts from Celsus transcribed into the work of Origen. He had the original before him. The question discussed was of absorbing interest, and he knew that the original and his response would be anxiously studied by friend and foe. He stood pledged as a man and as a christian that, when he professed to quote the words of his adversary, he quoted them truly. Any designed misquotation would have been suicidal ; detection must inevi- tably have followed ; and the fraud would have re- coiled like a thunderbolt upon his own head. His HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 43 great work bears intrinsic demonstrations of honor and candor. His extracts from Celsus are equiva- lent to copies verified by oath. A judicial affirma- tion could have imparted to them no additional sanctity. The passages from Celsus transcribed into the pages of Origen leave no possibility of doubt that the Gospel v^as in existence anterior to the time when the infidel wrote. His writings show that he had studied it with a diligent, though prejudiced eye. He could not thus have studied it unless it had been antecedently in being. He could not have answered writings not then extant. Celsus introduces into his work a fictitious Jew, who is often made his speaker. In our quotations we need not distinguish between the passages profess- edly uttered by Celsus, and those purporting to come from the mouth of the Jew ; in either case they are alike the words of the heathen philosopher. Extracts from Celsus follow : — " I could say many things concerning the affairs of Jesus, and those too true, different from those wiitten by the disciples of Jesus." " It is a fiction of theirs" (the writers of the Gospel) " that Jesus foreknew and foretold all things which befell him." " Some of the believers, as if they were drunk, take a liberty to alter the gospel from its first wri- 44 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. ting three or four ways, or oftener, that, when they are pressed hard and one reading has been confuted, they may disown that and flee to another." " These things then we have alleged to you out of your own writings, not needing any other witnesses. Thus you are beaten with your own weapons." " He" (Jesus) " threatens and feebly reproaches when he says, ' Woe unto you,' and ' I foretell unto you :" for thereby he plainly confesseth his disabihty to persuade ; which is so far below a God, that it is even unworthy a wise man." " O light ! O truth ! Jesus with his own mouth expressly declares these things as you have recorded it, that there will come unto you other men, with like wonders, wicked men and impostors." " Moses encoura- geth the people to get riches and destroy their enemies. But his" (God's) " Son, the Nazarean man, delivers quite contrary laws. Nor will he admit a rich man, or one that affects dominion, to have access to his Father. Nor will he allow men to take more care for food or treasure than the ravens ; nor to provide for clothing, so much as the lilies : and to him that has smitten once, he directs to offer that he may smite again." " To the sepulchre there came two angels, as is said by some, or, as by others, one only." " It is but a few years since he delivered this doctrine, who is now reckoned by the christians to be the Son of God." " Having been turned out of doors by her husband, she," (the mother of our Lord) " wandered about in a shameful manner till she had brought forth Jesus in an obscure place ; and he being in want, served in Egypt for a liveli- hood ; and having there learned some charms, such as the Egyptians were fond of, he returned home, and then valu- -^'m HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 45 ing himself upon those charms, he set up himself for a God." " It was given out by Jesus, that Chaldeans were moved at the time of his birth to come and worship him as a God when he was but a httle child, and that this was told to Herod the tetrarch, who issued out an order to have all killed who had been born about that time, intending to kill him with the rest, lest, if he should live to mature age, he should take the government." " What occasion had you" (Jesus) "when an infant, to be carried into Egypt, lest you should be killed ? A God has no reason to be afraid of death. And now an angel comes from heaven to direct you and your relations to flee into Egypt, lest you should be taken up and put to death ; as if the great God, who had already sent two angels upon your account, could not have preserved you, his own Son, at home." " But if he" (Herod) " was afraid that when you was come of age you should reign in his stead, why did you not reign when you was of age ? But so far from that, the Son of God wandei-s about, cringing like a necessitous beggar." " You say that when you was washed by John, there hghted upon you the appearance of a bird. What credible wit- ness has said that he saw this ? Or who heard the voice from heaven declaring you to be the Son of God excepting yourself : and if you are to be credited, one other of those who have been punished like yourself." " Jesus taking to himself ten or eleven abjects, vile publicans and sailors, went about with them, getting his subsistence in a base and shameful manner." " How should we take him for a God who, as we have understood, pertbrmed none of those things which were promised ? But when we have judged him 46 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. guilty and would bring him to punishment, though he shamefully hid himself and fled away, yet was taken, being betrayed by those whom he called his disciples. But it became not a God to flee, nor to be taken and executed ; least of all did it become him to be deserted and betrayed by his companions, who knew all his secrets, who followed him as their master, who esteemed him a saviour and the Son and messenger of the most high God." " If he fore- told who should betray him and who should deny him, how came it to pass that they did not fear him as a God, so that the one should not dare to betray him nor the other to deny him ? But they betrayed him and denied him ; so little did they regard him." " It was God who foretold these things ; therefore there was a necessity that they should come to pass. God therefore compelled his own disciples and prophets, with whom he ate and drank, to be wicked and abominable, for whose welfare above all others he ought to have been concerned. Never did man betray another with whom he sat at table. Here he who sits at table with God betrays him, and, which is still worse, God himself lays snares for those who sit at table with him, making them impious traitors." " If he thought fit to un- dergo such things, and if, in obedience to the Father, he suffered death, it is apparent that they could not be pain- ful and grievous to him, he being a God and consenting to them. Why then does he lament and bewail, and pray that the fear of destruction may be removed, saying to this purpose, O Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away ?" " Why did he not now, at last, if not before, deliver him- self from this ignominy, and do justice upon them who re- HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 47 viled both him and liis Father ?" " They who conversed with him when ahve, and heard his voice and followed him as their master, when they saw him under punishment and dying, were so far from dying with him, or for him, or being induced to despise sufferings, that they denied they were his disciples; but now-a-days you die with him." " But let us consider whether any one that has really died ever rose again in the same body, unless you think that the stories of others are indeed, as well as seem to be, fables, while your fable is probable and credible because of his voice on the cross when he expired, and the earthquake and the darkness; and because that when he was living he could not defend himself, but after he was dead he arose and showed the marks of his punishment, and how his hands had been pierced. But who saw all this ? Why, a distracted woman, as you say, and one or two of the same imposture, and some dreamers, who fancied they saw things as they desired to have them, the same that has happened to innumerable people." "If he would make manifest his divine power, he should have shown himself to them that derided him, and to him that condemned him, and indeed to all ; for surely he had no reason to fear any mortal blow now after he had died, and, as you say, was a God." " When he was neglected in the body, he was con- tinually preaching to all men ; but when he should have given full assurance to all men, he shows himself to one woman and his associates." " When he was punished he was seen of all, but when risen, by one ; the contrary to which ought rather to have been." " If he would be hid, why was there a voice from heaven declaring him to be the oj^ run ' I^NIVEBSI 48 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Son of God ? And if he would not be hid, why did he suf- fer, why did he die ? Is it not exceeding absurd, that you should desire and hope for the resurrection of the same body, as if we had nothing more excellent, nor more precious ?" " Omitting many things that might be alleged against what they say of their master, let us allow him to be truly an angel. Is he the first, and the only one that has come ? or have there been others before ? If they should say, he only, they are easily convicted of falsehood : for they say that others have often come, and in particular, that there came an angel to his sepulchre, some say one, others two, to tell the women that he was risen ; for the Son of God, it seems, could not open the sepulchre, but wanted another to remove the stone. And there came also an angel to the carpenter about Mary's pregnancy, and another angel to direct them to take the child and flee." " At first they" (the christians) " were few in number, and then they agreed. But being in- creased and spread abroad, they divide again and again, and every one will have a party of his own."* Should any person, after reading these passages, be inclined to censure their introduction into our pages, we would plead the authority of Origen in the third century, and of Lardner in the eighteenth. These distinguished christian authors transcribed into their works, not only the passages quoted by us from Celsus, but added many others even more irreverent and profane. We would plead another * Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History. Heathen Testimonies, HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 49 authority, perhaps still more touching to the pious heart. Lardner affirms that the devout Doddridge observed to him, that few learned men knew the importance of the remains of Celsus, and urged him to give prominence to the point when he came to treat of that heathen writer ; adding " that an abridgment of the history of Christ may be found in Celsus." The sainted author of " The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul," compiled a co- pious digest of those infidel remains, which he left behind him at his decease, and which Lardner has copied at large. In that digest, Doddridge, in ex- patiating upon the value of the fragments of Celsus to the christian argument, thus exclaims, " Who can forbear adoring the depth of divine wisdom in laying such a firm foundation for our faith in the Gospel history, in the writings of one who was so inveterate an enemy to it, and so indefatigable in his attempts to overthrow it !"* It is not to the antiquity of the Gospel alone that Celsus bears witness. He distinctly acknowledges that Jesus Christ was a real personage. He affirms that, having served in Egypt, " and there learned some charms," he afterwards " set up himself for a * Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History, Vol. IV. p. 145, 147. (f^r^ THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. God ;" that he was followed by " ten or eleven ab- jects, vile publicans and sailors ;" that he, when the government had "judged him guilty, and would bring him to punishment," " hid himself and fled away, yet was taken, being betrayed by those w^hom he called his disciples." And the impious unbeliever concedes that the evangelical doctrines w^ere delivered by Him, v^ho was, when he wrote, " reckoned by the christians to be the Son of God." Celsus also expressly admits, that the Gospel w^as w^ritten by the primitive apostles. He declares ; "I could say many things concerning the affairs of Jesus, and those, too, true, different from those written by the disciples of Jesus." By " the dis- ciples of Jesus" the infidel meant not the professors of his own day. Those he sometimes terms be- lievers, sometimes christians. It was to the earliest followers of our Lord alone that he applied the ap- pellation of " disciples of Jesus." When Celsus w^rote in the year one hundred and seventy-five, the average age of the books compo- sing the Gospel was something over a century. Some of them had been written a little earlier, and some a little later ; but the medium date of their publication w^as about one hundred and fifteen years before the date assigned for the w^ork of HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 51 Celsus. This appears from the writings of many of the christian fathers ; and may be gathered from the Sacred Record itself The era of the books composing the Gospel may also be inferred from the preserved fragments of the pagan philosopher in question. Celsus does not, indeed, expressly affirm that, when he wrote, the christian writings were about an hundred years old. But he gives no intimation that the phenomenon of Christianity had sprung up in his own lifetime. He speaks of it as the faith of a by-gone, as well as of the exist- ing generation. He says, " They who conversed with him" (Jesus) " when alive and heard his voice and followed him as their master, when they saw him under punishment and dying, were so far from dying with him, or for him, or being induced to despise sufferings, that they denied they were his disciples ; but now-a-days you die with him." Again he says ; " At first they," (the faithful) " were few in number ; and then they agreed. But being in- creased and spread abroad, they divide again and again, and every one will have a party of his own." The increase, scattering abroad, and successive divisions of the once united little band, and their array in multifarious and independent parties, were changes and revolutions which could scarcely have 52 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. been accomplished within a century after the pub- lication of the evangelical writings. And that not much over a century had intervened between the promulgation of the Gospel and the time when Celsus wrote, is also inferable from the transcribed fragments of his work. He admits that the birth of Jesus was in the reign of Herod. About the year two hundred and seventy of our era, the heathen Porphyry wrote his elaborate treatise against Christianity in fifteen books. His work is lost. He was answered by Methodius, Eusebius and Apollinarius. Their confutations have also perished. All the remains of the heathen treatise, to which we can have access, are to be gleaned from surviving christian writings of early date, into which they were transcribed while the work of Porphyry was in existence. These re- mains are few in number ; but they are decisive of the real existence of Jesus Christ, and of the anti- quity of the Gospel. In speaking of the memorable conversion of Origen to Christianity, Porphyry said : " An example of this absurd method may be observed in a man, whom I saw when I was very young, who was then in great esteem, and is so still for the writings which he has left behind him ; I mean Origen, whose authority is / HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 63 very great with the teachers of this doctrine. For he, be- ing a hearer of Ammonius, who was so eminent in our time for skill in philosophy, in point of learning made great im- provements by the instructions of that master, but, with regard to the right way of hfe, took a quite different course with him. For Ammonius, a christian by birth, and brought up by christian parents, as soon as he was arrived to maturity of age, and had gained a taste for philosophy, returned to the way of Hfe prescribed by the laws. But Origen, a Greek, and educated in the Greek sentiment, went over to the barbarian temerity ; to which he devoted himself, and corrupted himself and the principles of hterature which he had received : as to his life, living as a christian, and contrary to the laws ; with regard to his sentiments concerning things and the Deity, a Greek, and joining Greek sentiments with their absurd febles." It seems that in some copies of Matthew, extant in the days of Porphyry, the prophecy named in the thirty-fifth verse of the thirteenth chapter of that evangelist was incorrectly ascribed to Isaiah. The heathen philosopher seized with avidity on the clerical error, and thus taunted his christian oppo- nents ; " Your evangelist Matthew was so ignorant as to say; which was written by the prophet Isaiah, I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter things kept secret from the foundation of the world." This is palpable demonstration that the Gospel of Saint Matthew was in existence at the 54 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. time Porphyry wrote. And Porphyry must also have read the Gospel of Saint John, for he thus expressed himself; "If the Son of God be Word, he must be either outward Word or inward Word. But he is neither this nor that. Therefore he is not Word." So, also. Porphyry must have known that, long before his day, Jesus Christ had been revered as a divine Being. For he declared, " And now people wonder that this distemper has op- pressed the city so many years, Esculapius and the other gods no longer conversing with men. For since Jesus has been honored, none have received any public benefit from the gods."* The ancient christian writers, whose works sur- vive, abound in details of the substance of Por- phyry's vituperations against Christianity ; but we know of no other cases where his very words have been transcribed. And in our extracts from pagan authors we would adhere to their exact language. The emperor Julian wrote his voluminous work against Christianity about the year three hundred and sixty. His work has been destroyed by the lapse of time. Several christian fathers replied to it. Among the most distinguished was Cyril, who * Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History : Heathen Testimonies. / HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 55 wrote about sixty years after the appearance of the imperial treatise. He has assured us that he cited Julian in his own words ; and would not have com- promitted his character in the face of his own assu- rances by fraudulent misquotation. And even the arch-skeptic Gibbon, in speaking of the work of JuHan, says; "Some fragments have been tran- scribed and preserved by his adversary, the vehe- ment Cyril of Alexandria" — without daring to insinuate that the illustrious christian failed in good faith or accuracy.* Extracts from Julian follow : " I think it right for me to show to all men the reasons by which I have been convinced that the religion of the Galileans is a human contrivance badly put together, having in it nothing divine. But abusing the childish, irrational part of the soul which delights in fable, they have intro- duced a heap of wonderful works, to give it the appearance of truth." " That Moses says God was the God of Israel only and of Judea, and that they were his chosen people, I shall demonstrate presently ; and that not only he, but the prophets after him, and Jesus, the Nazarine, say the same ; yea, and Paul also, who excelled all the jugglers and im- postors that ever were." " That God from the beginning took care of the Jews only, and that they were his chosen lot, appears not only from Moses and Jesus, but from Paul * Gibbon, Vol. IV. page 81. 56 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. also ; though this may be justly thought strange in Paul : but upon every occasion, like a polypus upon the rocks, he changeth his notions of God ; at one time affirming that the Jews only are God's heritage ; at another time, to per- suade the Greeks and gain them over to his side, saying, is he God of the Jews only? Yes, of the gentiles also." " Jesus, whom you celebrate, was one of Caesar's subjects. K you dispute it, I will prove it by and by. But it may as well be done now. For yourselves allow that he was en- rolled with his father and mother in the time of Cyrenius. But after he was born, what good did he do to his rela- tions ? For they would not, as it is said, believe on him. And yet that stiff-necked and hard-hearted people believed Moses. But Jesus, who rebuked the winds, and walked on the seas, and cast out demons, and, as you will have it, made the heaven and the earth, (though none of his dis- ciples presumed to say this of him except John only, nor he clearly and distinctly ; however, let it be allowed that lie said so) could not order his designs so as to save his friends and relations." " But Jesus having persuaded a few among you, and those the worst of men, has now been celebrated about three hundred years ; having done nothing in his lifetime worthy of remembrance, unless any thinks it a mighty matter to heal lame and blind people, and exor- cise demoniacs, in the villages of Bethsaidi and Bethany." " But you are so unhappy as not to adhere to the things delivered to you by the apostles ; but they have been al- tered by you for the worse, and carried on to yet greater impiety. For neither Paul, nor Matthew, nor Luke, nor Mark have dared to call Jesus God. But honest John, un- I HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 57 derstanding that a great multitude of men in the cities of Greece and Italy were seized with this distemper, and hear- ing likewise, as I suppose, that the tombs of Peter and Paul were respected and frequented, though as yet pri- vately only, however having heard of it, he then first pre- sumed to advance that doctrine." "But you, miserable people, at the same time that ye refuse to worship the shield that fell down from Jupiter and is preserved by us, which was sent down to us by the great Jupiter, or our father Mars, as a certain pledge of the perpetual govern- ment of our city, you worship the wood of the cross, and make signs of it upon your foreheads, and fix it upon your doors. Shall we for this most hate the understanding, or pity the simple and ignorant among" you who are so very unhappy as to leave the immortal gods, and go over to a dead Jew." " You have killed not only our people who persisted in the ancient rehgion, but likewise heretics, equally deceived with yourselvei, but who did not mourn the dead man exactly in the same manner as you do. But these are your own inventions ; for Jesus has nowhere di- rected you to do such things, nor yet Paul. The reason is, that they never expected you would have arrived at such power. They were contented with deceiving maid-servants and slaves, and by them some men and women, such as Cornelius and Sergius. If there were then any other men of eminence brought over to you, I mean in the times of Tiberius and Claudius, when these things happened, let me pass for a liar in everything I say." " But why do you not observe a pure diet as well as the Jews, but eat all things like herbs of the field, believing Peter, because he said, 3* 68 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Wiat God has cleansed that call not thou common. What does that mean, unless that God formerly declared them to be impure, but now has made them clean ? For Moses speaking of four-footed beasts, says, Whatsoever di- videth the hoof and cheweth the cud is clean ; but what- soever does not do so, that is unclean. If then, since the vision of Peter, the swine has chewed the cud, let us believe him ; for that would be truly wonderful, if since Peter's vision it got that faculty. But if he feigned that vision, or, to use your phrase, the revelation at the tanner's, why should you believe him in a thing of that nature ?"* The infidel historian of declining Rome further confirms the genuineness of the passages quoted from the apostate emperor, by affirming that Lardner has "accurately compiled all that can now be discovered of Julian's work against the christians, "t The confirmation of the Gospel history derived from these extracts, is too palpable to need labored elucidation. The royal apostate confesses that before he wrote, Jesus had been celebrated about three hundred years; that he was enrolled with his father and mother for taxation in the time of Cyrenius ; that he rebuked the winds and walked on the seas, and healed lame and blind people, and * Lardner's Credibility of Gospel History. Heathen Testimonies. t Gibbon's Rome, VoL IV. p. 81. Note G. HEATHEN TESTIMONIES. 59 exorcised demoniacs in the villages of Bethsaidi and Bethany ; that Cornelius and Sergius had be- come early converts to the faith; that the chief events which the New Testament records hap- pened in the times of Tiberius and Claudius, and were written by the apostles of Jesus. Julian ex- pressly names, among the composers of the Gos- pel, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Paul, and re- fers to Peter as an apostolic chief, and, by impli- cation at least, as an evangelical writer. The apostate could not have been mistaken respecting the reahty of the events recorded in the Gospel. Baptized and educated in the new faith, he became at twenty a convert to idolatry, and, upon ascending the throne, changed from christian to pagan the religion of the state. The startling change demanded public vindication. In warring against the creed of his youth, he deemed the imperial pen a more efficient weapon than the stake, the cross, or the lions, so often employed in vain by his infidel predecessors. He had qualified himself for the adventurous attempt by rare attain- ments in classic and in sacred knowledge. Chris- tianity was the great phenomenon of the Augustan age, and he had explored its history from its birth in the manger of Bethlehem to its assumption of 60 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. the royal diadem. With the locaUties and tradi- tions of Judea he had become intimately ac- quainted. He had studied the prophecies of our Lord concerning the destruction of Jerusalem, and attempted to falsify those prophecies by rebuilding the holy temple. He was familiar with all the ar- guments and the calumnies against the religion of the Crucified, ever invented by Jewish malignancy or by heathen cunning. Had there been anything of imposture or of fable in the sacred narratives, it would not have escaped the eagle eye of the learned emperor, scanning at a glance the whole horizon of the three centuries preceding his own era. Nor did he stand alone : he was aided by all the satellites of polytheism, lay and ecclesiastical. He was the representative of the whole pagan world. His confession to the fidelity of the chris- tian history, may be regarded as the united, the solemn, the official confession of heathen an- tiquity. So much for the pagan testimonials. We now proceed to the Jewish. Josephus, the Hebrew historian, was born at Jerusalem four years after the ascension, and wrote his Jewish Antiquities in the year ninety-three of the christian era, about twenty-three years after the destruction of the holy JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 61 city. In that copious and learned work are found the following passages : — " Bringing before them James, the brother of him who is called Christ."* " At that time lived Jesus, a wise man, if he may be called a man, for he performed many wonder- ful works. He was a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him many Jews and gentiles. This was the Christ ; and when Pilate, at the instigation of the chief men among us, had condemned him to the cross, they who before had conceived an affection for him did not cease to adhere to him ; for on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold these and many wonderful things concerning him. And the sect of christians so called from him, subsists to this day."t If these passages are genuine they are an ex- press recognition of the truths of Christianity ex- torted from the Jewish historian. But the gen- uineness of the passages has been denied ; they have been considered, even by many christian scholars, as the interpolations of a subsequent age. Expunge the passages, and the works of Jo- sephus contain not the slightest allusion to Jesus Christ, or to the religion of which he was - the Founder. Such silence, if supposed to exist, could * Jewish Antiq. lib. xx. cap. ix. § 1. f Ibid. lib. xviii. cap. iil § 3. 62 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. not have been the offspring of ignorance or of in- advertence. It is impossible that the miracles of Christianity, Vi^hich had filled the world w^ith astonishment, should not have reached the ears and impressed themselves on the memory of the vigilant Jose- phus. If the early history of our faith was so familiar to the Roman Tacitus, how could it have escaped the knowledge or the recollection of the learned Hebrew ? Born and brought up in Jeru- salem, within sight of the garden and of the blood- stained hill, the nursery where he first began to lisp must have been vocal with the tales of won- der; the mount of Olives, and Gethsemane, and Calvary were no doubt scenes of his boyish pas- times ; he may have played on the very spots where Jesus kneeled, where Jesus died. Nor could Josephus have deemed the narrative of the carpenter's Son beneath the dignity of his- tory. Christianity, be it a romance or a glorious reality, is the loftiest theme to which the historic muse has ever aspired. He who thought it worth his while to record the impostures of the Galilean Judas, and of the Egyptian false prophet, might well have deigned to notice the thrilling story of the cross, even had he believed it a cunningly-de- JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 63 vised fable. If Josephus, indeed, omitted any allu- sion to the name and miracles of Jesus Christ, the omission is far more wonderful than would have been the absence of the least allusion to the rise and progress of the Gospel in Gibbon's Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire, or the total ob- livion of the Reformation in Hume's History of England. Here, then, are presented two alternatives; either the Jewish historian actually wrote the pas- sages we have copied from his works, affirming the messiahship of Mary's Son, or else he was silent upon the subject by design. For ourselves, we should deem the christian evidences strengthened by the adoption of the latter alternative. More impressive than words is often the admission in- dicated by silence. Words sometimes escape without profound thought; designed silence im- plies cautious deliberation. Josephus was of the order of the priesthood. When he wrote his Jewish Antiquities, near the close of the first century, his mental vision grasped at one view the original signs and wonders of Je- sus Christ; his crucifixion, with the retiring sun and the shuddering earth ; the severed vail of the temple ; the stupendous resurrection ; the glorious 64 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. ascension; the outpouring of the Holy Ghost at pentecost ; the gift of tongues ; the continued apostoHc miracles ; the supernatural triumphs of the persecuted faith in its conquering march from kingdom to kingdom, and from continent to con- tinent. Brooding over the ruins of Jerusalem, he read there the tremendous fulfilment of the pre- dictions of the Son of God. Bewildered in the contemplation of all these original and supple- mental marvels congregated together like moun- tain piled upon mountain, the Hebrew rabbi may have stood confounded and overwhelmed. With- out magnanimity to admit, or hardihood to deny that his nation, headed by its priesthood, had slain the Lord of glory, the historian of the Jews might well have remained speechless. Speech- lessness is a confession of guiltiness more potent than language. It was the speechlessness of the guest without the wedding garment, that crowned the evidence upon which he was justly bound hand and foot and cast into outer darkness, where is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. After the death of Josephus, the meagre litera- ture of the Jews was concentrated in their Mishna and Talmuds. The Mishna was a collection of all the Jewish traditions in six books, commencing ♦ JEWISH TESTIMONIES. 65 at a remote period of antiquity and continued until near the close of the second century, when it was published. To this original text, commentaries called the Gemara, were appended; and the text and its commentaries together constituted the Tal- mud. In process of time two Talmuds appeared ; the Jerusalem Talmud, published about the year three hundred, in one large folio, and the Babylo- nian Talmud, published about the year five hun- dred, and which, by successive editions, has ex- panded into twelve folios. It is a singular fact, that in the Mishna no dis- tinct reference to the christian religion can be found. The Mishna was compiled by a learned Israelite, named Rabbi Judah, then rector of the Hebrew school at Tiberias, in Galilee. At the time of its compilation, the origin and spread of Christianity, and all its reported miracles, had be- come the wonder of the world. The heathen Cel- sus had recently published against the Gospel his voluminous work. Yet upon our holy religion, the Rabbi Judah was silent as the grave. Absorbed in contemplating the evangelical predictions of the destruction of Jerusalem, and their swift fulfilment m the smouldering ruins of the beloved city, the compiler of the Mishna was lost in amazement ; his 66 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth ; the speech- lessness of Josephus fell upon his successor. Nor is any discussion of the truth or untruth of Christianity to be found in the Talmuds, volumi- nous as those publications have become. Their brief and vague allusions to the subject, v^^hile vir- tually admitting the antiquity of the Gospel, and that its Founder and his disciples wrought signs and wonders, affect to deride the prodigies as the artifices of magic learned in Egypt ; or as having been wrought by the right pronunciation of the ineffable name of Jehovah, stolen from the temple. Neither heathen nor Jewish pen ever dared to inti- mate that Jesus Christ was a fictitious personage, or that the christian Scriptures were the forgery of an age posterior to their assumed date. We are not ignorant that there is a chain of christian authors, commencing at the apostolic era, and stretching downward until long after Christi- anity had permanently assumed the imperial purple, whose surviving works attest with overpowering force the genuineness and antiquity of the books composing the Gospel. These holy fathers, whose list is headed by the names of Barnabus, Clement and Hermas, the companions of the blessed Paul, were placed like watchmen along the track of de- ~ . TESTIMONIES OF THE FATHERS. 67 scending centuries, with an average interval of only about ten years between them, ever intent upon the swelling stream of salvation, and exultingly point- ing upwards to its divine fountain-head. An abridgment of the testimony of this vast host of christian witnesses, fills two large quarto volumes in the great work upon the historical proofs of Christianity, entitled, " The Credibility of the Gos- pel History," to which we have already referred. Further compression would vitally impair the strength of the testimony. Instead of attempting its faint sketch and virtual mutilation within the limits of our brief essay, devoted chiefly to the in- ternal evidences of the Gospel, we refer the reader to the original abridgment compiled by the patient and masterly hand of the erudite Lardner. CHAPTER III. DIVINE REVELATION WAS COEVAL WITH THE CREATION OF MAN. Any supernatural communicatioa from God a divine revelation — No matter what its form or subject — Human race not from ever- lasting — Man created without instinct of brutes, or innate ideas to guide him — Our primeval ancestors at their creation were but grown-up infants — Utterly inexperienced, they would have per- ished from hunger, thirst, cold, or casualties, without supernatural instruction — Such instruction a divine revelation — General ex- pectation of heathen world before birth of Christ that moral light was about to dawn. The primary objection of skeptical philosophy against the Gospel's claim to inspiration consists in the broad proposition, that God has never conde- scended to make a preternatural revelation of him- self to the children of men. Infidelity confines not its attacks to the miraculous outworks of christian faith ; it aims its shafts at the heaven-constructed citadel within. It repudiates miracles as opposed to the common laws of nature ; it discards inspira- tion as opposed to those higher laws by which the Almighty binds his ow^n infinite Majesty. We must bear carefully in mind, that any super- natural communication from God to man is a divine ANTiaUITY OP REVELATION. .09 revelation. Neither its form or its subject is ma- terial to its constitution. It is a divine revelation, whatever may be its form or its subject, if it has come down preternaturally from the Deity. In our present chapter, we shall attempt to prove that, be- fore the revelation to Moses, God had imparted supernatural communications to the sons of human- ity. Should the attempt be successful, it will ef- fectually demolish the major proposition in the primary syllogism of unbelief. Our purposed dem- onstration will rest, not on w^hat infidelity de- nounces as the deceptive evidence of the Bible, but on those natural and fixed principles which entered into the original structure of man. Should our effort prevail, it will reach the fountain-head, whence the poisonous streams of skepticism have been flowing for so long a succession of centuries. That the generations of our race have not been of eternal continuance, is, perhaps, a self-evident truism. The supposition of a chain of infinite length, composed of finite links, without any start- ing-point to hang on, is an absurdity which sinks under its own downward gravitation. Nor was man's habitation from everlasting. This poor earth of ours, waxing old even in its youth, could ill have sustained the wear and convulsions of never-be- 70 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. ginning ages. If the successive generations of men were from everlasting, how must the whole race have slept " to dumb forgetfulness a prey/' during the countless centuries of the early Past ! How happens it that the flight of a by-gone eternity has reared no trophy to man's ethereal mind, save within the comparatively little speck of the last few thousand years ? The conclusion is inevitable, that man is not a self-existent being. He was brought into existence within the limits of time. The first progenitors of our race must have been constituted male and fe- male ; and we will suppose that they were created in the full maturity of their faculties, corporeal and intellectual. With the exact period of their forma- tion, and the particular country in which they were located, our argument has no immediate concern. Our present object is to prove that, whenever formed and wherever placed, they must, in their state of original inexperience, have speedily and miserably perished, carrying with them into ob- livion the hopes of their promised seed, unless they had been specially and preter naturally instructed from heaven. This special and preternatural in- struction had all the attributes of a divine revela- tion. ANTiaUITY OF REVELATION. 71 Our earliest ancestors were doubtless cast in the common mould of humanity, untainted, indeed, by original sin. In physical powers, corporeal and mental, they differed not from their descendants. The great Locke affirms that man comes into ex- istence without innate ideas, and that the mind is originally a sheet of white paper where experience, at her leisure, is to write her instructive lessons. His theory has been the subject of much criticism. But, perhaps, the difference between him and his critics consists in words rather than in substance. They contend that, as the acorn encloses in its small circumference the oak that may reign for centuries the monarch of the forest, so the mind, at its birth, contains within itself all the intellec- tual elements of the future man, waiting only oc- casions for their development. But they will not maintain that these elements can be developed without experience, any more than they would maintain that the acorn can be expanded into the oak without soil, moisture and heat. The theory of Locke and that of his learned opponents lead, therefore, to the same practical result. Without the teachings and culture of experience, or some miraculous instruction from above, the newly cre- ated mind must of necessity remain, on either 72 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. theory, inert and helpless from its nativity to its dissolution. It is equally certain that man has not the instinct of the brute. God bestows upon his creatures only what their natures need. The en- dowments of his creating goodness, like the manna of the desert, are distributed with no prodigal pro- fusion. To man is not imparted the instinct of inferior animals, because man needs it not. In the brute creation instinct is the substitute for reason. Instinct has made the beaver a pro- ficient in architecture, and earned for the elephant the appellation of "half reasoning." God made man in his own image, and after his own likeness ; he breathed into him the breath of life from the fountain of his own vitality. With the intellectual image of the Almighty within him, the lord of the terrestrial creation needs not the instinct of his subject animals. To man it would be superfluous ; doubtless onerous. God bestows nothing in vain. The wastefulness of human prodigality can find no countenance in the example of the Highest. Reason is man's all-sufficient boon ; slight are the sprinklings of instinct perceptible in the human structure. Our primitive ancestors constituted, as their de- scendants are constituted, without the instinct of II ' ANTIQUITY OF REVELATION. 73 the brute creation or innate ideas of competency to guide them, were, when first brought into exist- ence, but grown-up infants. Their maturity of body and of mind was bootless without the teach- ings derived from experience. A person kept in a soHtary prison from birth to manhood, without ever beholding the light of the blessed sun, or see- ing the " human face divine," or hearing the sound of human voice, would, if suddenly emancipated from confinement and thrown upon his own un- disciplined resources, find himself intellectually helpless as the nQw-born babe. His physical powers would little avail him ; and, unless some pitying eye should find him and some helping hand be stretched forth for his relief, his dismayed and despairing spirit would speedily yearn after the water, the bread and the shelter of his dungeon home. Our first parents, on the day of their creation, were even more infantine in knowledge than the emancipated prisoner to whom we have just al- luded. The Bible affirms that God himself was their gracious Schoolmaster. Philosophy, if she rejects the scriptural account, is bound to suggest some other means that could have saved from swift destruction the inexperienced pair, cast un- 4 74 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. awares and without terrestrial guide upon a scene SO new and strange. Unbelief, in all its hardihood, is challenged to intimate any expedient by which they could, without light from above, have sur- vived the first year of their miserable being. We invite the eye of sympathy to explore, painful as may be the task, the fearful evils which, without a heavenly teacher, must have environed those lone tenants of a wilderness world. The sun that first beheld the new-made ances- tors of human kind, would soon go down. And what, save some cheering intimation from heaven, could have saved from frenzy the derelict pair amidst the maddening horrors of that first night ? Hunger would not long delay its imperative calls. And how were the forsaken strangers to be res- cued from the jaws of famine? The oracle of reason, mute in amazement, could yield no re- sponse. Experience is the only efficient purveyor for food. Feeble instinct might have conveyed to the mouth whatever substance the hand could grasp; but neither the instinct of humanity, nor reason without practice, could distinguish the nu- tritious from the poisonous, or discerningly choose between the wholesome fruits of the tree and the wild grass of the field. Our primeval ancestors, ANTiaUITY OF REVELATION. 75 created to rule this lower world, must, without divine guidance, have perished from very hunger, whilst " the cattle upon a thousand hills" rioted in plenty. Thirst would interpose its fierce claims. But what kind prompting, save from above, could conduct to the cool spring or the pure stream ? Nature might have invited the outcasts to roam through her woods. But who was to forewarn against the deadly precipice, or the raging flood ? The naked wanderers would have exquisitely felt the alternations of heat and of cold. Yet how were they to learn the cool of the shade, or the warmth of raiment ? The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests, indicated by animal instincts. But for shelter against the pitiless storm and the wintry blasts, the inexperienced pair had no skill to con- struct the cabin or explore the cavern. Fire is needful for the preservation of life. But without instruction from heaven, how could the first fire have been lighted ? The breath of man could no more have enkindled the visible, than the vital spark. The production of flame by collision was a fortuitous discovery, requiring experience to ma- ture. Yet our pristine ancestors survived; and skepticism, to be consistent with itself, must needs attribute their escape from impendent perils — from 76 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. death by fright or famine — by thirst or flood — by precipice or poison — by burning heat or freezing cold — not to the God who made them, but to the bUnd god of the atheist. In the theory of unbeUef, chance was their sole preserver. The Bible indicates that speech was communi- cated to our first parents by the Almighty. Philos- ophy, if she rejects the Mosaic account, is bound to substitute a sounder exposition of the origin of language. The use of articulate sounds for the communication of thoughts is not taught by nature. The infant cries instinctively ; he instinctively ap- plies his mouth to the maternal fountain ; but he does not instinctively talk. To suppose that primi- tive and unaided man was the author of language, would imply a marvel stranger than that of the scriptural narrative. Why should it be thought incredible that, at the beginning, God distinguished the lord of this lower world from his subject brutes by miraculously teaching him the science of speech ? It is true that persons of different languages, cast upon a desert island, would learn to intercommu- nicate by signs, and ultimately, perhaps, by a rude dialect of their own formation. But they were conscious, when they met, that man had become a ANTiaUITY OF REVELATION. 77 speaking animal; each knew that the others, as well as himself, were familiar with the use of articu- late sounds; they had but to apply a discovery, ancient and heaven-taught, to the exigency of their own case. The formation of a dialect, compounded from their mother tongues, would bear no affinity to the first creation of language. If the survivors of a fleet, stranded on some solitary coast, should from the wrecks around them, with the tools of marine architecture at hand, construct and rig out some rude craft for their escape, the achievement would sustain no comparison with the original in- vention of the sublime science of ship-building. And yet the science of ship-building bears to the primeval structure of language, a less proportion than the diminutive hillock bears to the majestic mountain. The foregoing premises demonstrate that God must have imparted supernatural communications to man in the very infancy of his existence. Had the communications related solely to the concerns of time, they would still have been divine revelations. It is not a necessary element of divine revelation, that it should pertain to the awful realities of eter- nity. Religion has been the usual, but not the exclusive subject of inspirations from heaven. The 78 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. dream of the hardened Pharaoh was a divine reve- lation of the approaching famine. And yet famine is but a temporal dispensation. The Jewish code of civil jurisprudence was a divine revelation, equally with the ten commandments proclaimed from the quaking mount. The handwriting on the wall of the Chaldean palace was a divine revelation, though predicting only the tyrant's secular doom, and the extinction of the Babylonian dynasty. Nor was the divinity of the communications to our first parents affected by the manner in which they may have been imparted. The heavenly messages were divine revelations, whether con- veyed by the audible voice which afterwards thundered from Sinai, or by angel whispers, or in dreams and visions of the night. Peradventure God wrote his instructions to the infant adults with his own hand on the sheets of their inexperienced minds. Still the preternatural handwriting was a divine revelation. Perhaps the intellectual vacuum was supplied by a miraculous infusion of instinct. Still the instinctive lore, foreign to the limits of humanity, was a divine revelation. The footsteps of divine revelation to pristine man mark every line in the first chapter of the book of nature. The pure and clear eye of candor cannot ANTiaUITY OF REVELATION. 79 fail to perceive them there. And observe well the accordance between that book and the book of avowed Inspiration. The first chapters of the Sacred Volume proclaim the divine revelations, for temporal objects, made to our primeval ancestors in the very morn of their being ; the proclamation had been anticipated in nature's still earlier volume. The accordance between the Book of Scripture and the book of nature, establishes the truth of both. The preternatural communications recorded in nature's register, are the first link in that stu- pendous chain of revelations which terminated not until the close of the Apocalypse. Proof that the first link of the chain was wrought by heaven, is " confirmation strong" that the workmanship of its other links is also divine. The sublunary wants of the world's master, so miraculously supplied, bore no greater proportion to what sin made his spiritual wants, than time bears to eternity. When God looked down from heaven on the early descendants of the original pair, he beheld them immerged in ignorance, crime and idolatry. Then came a deluge, of which earth will carry to her grave indelible marks. But all the waters of the flood could not wash from our sphere the pollutions of sin. In due time the ex- 80 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. periment of civilization was tried. Science eleva- ted the mind, but purified not the heart. Apostate man could not " by searching find out God." The fallen race were conscious, indeed, of hostility to their Creator; but, when asked to indicate the way of reconciliation, reason's boasted oracle was speechless. Man felt the divinity stirring within him ; but whether his ethereal spirit was to perish with its sister clay, or survive " the wreck of mat- ter and the crush of worlds," was a problem insolv- able by humanity. No exertion of mortal intellect could bring " life and immortality to light." For thousands of years the aching and bewil- dered soul was lifting up its piercing and frantic cries to heaven for illumination and help. The whole creation groaned and travailed in pain to- gether.* Yet did the fallen creature, in his lowest estate, bear marks, " like archangel ruined," of his pristine grandeur. That Jehovah should have pro- vided by special revelation for his original physical wants, and yet make no provision for his subsequent spiritual necessities, intense as they were, is a sup- position opposed to that reason which infidelity idolatrously worships as a goddess, and derogatory, * Romans viiL 22. ANTiaUITY OF REVELATION. 81 we speak it with reverence, to the infinite goodness of Him who has arrayed the HHes of the field, and provided food for the young ravens. The primeval revelation from heaven registered in the book of nature, was the first act of a series ; it was the sure precursor of more glorious revelations to come. The grand drama of God, exhibited to an astonished universe, would lose its completeness by subtracting, as uninspired, a single line from the Old Testament or the New. Man's miraculous preservation in his pristine state was the visible commencement of the divine drama ; its sublime consummation was de- veloped by the miracle of his redemption. Nor must the general belief of the pagan world before the birth of Jesus Christ, that moral light was about to dawn from above, be passed over in silence. Socrates, sometimes called the almost christian, deplored in his dying hour his want of spiritual vision, and encouraged Plato and his other weeping disciples to expect in patience a revelation from heaven. The heathen Suetonius declares ; " It was an ancient and constant opinion, and founded upon the knowledge of some divine decree, that a person or persons would appear in Judea, who should obtain the government of the world." Taci- tus observes ; " It was the persuasion of most an- 4* 82 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. cient persons, that the olden books of the priests contained passages which impHed that the East would become powerful, and that there would arise in Judea those w^ho should achieve universal em- pire." It is manifest that Virgil, in his fourth eclogue, had some glimpses of " the day's spring from on high." These cherished hopes might have been suggested by the inspired oracles of the Jews ; but the suggestions found a ready and deep re- sponse from the smothered divinity breathed by the Almighty into the human breast. CHAPTER IV. THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. "Works of God and of man distinguishable by inspection — Whether God or man made Gospel is determinable by its internal evi- dence — Moral attributes of God not discoverable by reason — Yet reason perceives divine truthfulness of their delineation in Gos- pel — Style of Bible — Atonement beyond mortal contrivance — Yet when revealed, reason must recognize it the work of God — The Trinity — A mystery too profound and startling for impostors to have incorporated into work of fiction. There is a contrast between the works of God and the works of man, which plainly distinguishes the divine from the human. Raise your medita- tion to the system above us, with its central sun, and wheeling orbs. How symmetrical! How simple ! How majestic ! How changeless ! How adapted in all its variegated parts to the perfection of its stupendous whole! Then sink your con- templation to the proudest work of man. How diminutive ! How imperfect ! How indicative of the little shifts of artifice ! How prone to derange- ment, to the vicissitudes of change, and to the de- crepitude of age! Each aspect of the visible heavens bears on its face the impress of divinity. 84 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Nor are the sublunary works of God less distin- guishable from the works of his creature. It re- quires no elaborate study to discover that the house is the production of mortal hands, and that the Architect of the mountains is He who hath weighed them "in scales, and the hills in a bal- ance." The bridge that spans the stream is pal- pably of human structure ; the flowing stream below proclaims the workmanship of Him who makes " rivers in the desert." Earth's petty mas- ter claims as his own the curiously- wrought watch ; but the observer perceives at a glance that it is the pencil of the Almighty which paints the lilies of the field. God imitates not the works of mortals ; nor can the barrier between the human and the divine be passed by the brother of the worm. To the authorship of the meanest production of om- nipotent power mortality dare not lay claim ; nor will the loftiest production of manhood rashly con- tend for heavenly origin. What God has made and what man has made, is a question of great simplicity and easy solution ; it requires not the invocation of extraneous proofs ; it is tested by its internal evidence. To this rule, boundless as the realms of nature and of art, can it be that the Gospel is a lonely exception ? Is it THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 85 the only thing that does not demonstrate its own paternity ? Of all the works of God and of man, is it the isolated production whose authorship cannot be ascertained by inspection ? We deny that the Gospel presents such a strange anomaly in the vis- ible universe. Its diligent, honest and candid ex- plorer can no more doubt its divine origin than the astronomer can doubt that the worlds are the crea- tions of Jehovah. In addressing his heavenly Father the psalmist piously exclaimed, " Thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name."* If this exclamation be true, the divine hand must be deeply engraved upon the holy pages. God has magnified his Word above his other works by specially impressing upon it the image of himself. Historic corroborations are sat- isfactory and useful to the investigation of the christian evidences. Yet they form but the out- works of Sacred Truth. The glorious Citadel of Salvation rests its claim to divinity chiefly on the symmetry, the beauty, the purity, the strength, the unearthly majesty of its own proportions. The Gospel is itself its best Advocate. In canvassing the internal evidences of the * Psalm cxiQcviii. 2. 86 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. christian religion, the first theme that presents it- self is its sublime theology. The theology of the Gospel comprises the being and attributes of God, the redemption of the world by the vicarious suf- ferings of Jesus Christ, and the personality and agencies of the Holy Ghost. The Bible represents its God as a Being eter- nally self-existent, uniting in himself almightiness, omnipresence, omniscience, immutability, inflexible truth, infinite holiness, infinite justice, and infinite love. This assemblage of perfections is unques- tionably the most stupendous exhibition ever pre- sented to human view. Yet impartial reason must perceive and admit the fidelity of the sublime pic- ture. Even infidelity is obliged to confess that the Jehovah of the Bible is just such a Deity as the universe required for its creation, preservation and government. Unbelief, unless sunk to the grade of atheism, will not venture to deny that the Scrip- tures have faithfully delineated the true and only God of nature. In the august representation there is nothing to subtract, nothing to add, nothing to amend. The scriptural delineation of God was not drawn by mortal pencil. Reason may recognize truths when presented to her contemplation, which she THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 87 would never have originated by her own unaided efforts. A ploughman may credit the marvels of astronomy, which it required the genius of a New- ton to bring to light. It would be foreign to our purpose to inquire whether, if man had remained in his primitive state of holiness, he would of him- self have discovered the perfections of his Creator in their glorious amplitude. Man did not remain in his primitive state of holiness. He fell : and sin miserably dimmed his spiritual vision. By the apostasy his heart became darkened. There is a moral, as well as a physical imbecility of the intel- lect. Almost six thousand years have elapsed since the creation, and fallen man has never soared to a just conception of the true God, except where inspiration has shed its beams. To show the ca- pacity of reason for advancement in the science of theism, infidelity has vauntingly pointed to the early Bramins of India, to the Confucius of China, to the Zoroaster of Persia, and to the Socrates and Plato of classic Greece. But these sages made little progress in the science of theological truth ; and what little they learned was chiefly derived from the divine fountain opened by early rev- elation. Reason may, by its own efforts, trace effects to 88 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. their cause, and thus infer the existence of Him who framed the worlds. It may furthermore con- clude that the Creator and Governor of the uni- verse must be almighty and omniscient. But should fallen man, without the lamp of Scripture, attempt to explore what are termed the moral at- tributes of the Deity, he must wander and be lost in utter darkness. What, for instance, could a sinful being know of the holiness of God ? When seen in the scriptural mirror, it constitutes one of the chief of Jehovah's attributes. Next to redeem- ing love, it is perhaps the most stirring theme in the anthem of the skies ; and the uplifted eye of terrestrial devotion ever gazes with wonder and delight on the holiness of Him who " sitteth upon the throne." But of " the beauty of holiness," car- nal wisdom could learn nothing from communing with herself Without the vocabulary of the Bible, she must have remained ignorant even of the meaning of the terms. Yet, when the volume of Inspiration reiterates the hallelujah of heaven, " Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts," reason must needs yield her concurring, though perhaps reluctant response. With the Bible before her, she must perforce admit that holiness is essential to happiness ; that without holiness, heaven would THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 89 be heaven no more ; that a God divested of infinite hoHness would cease to be a God of infinite beati- tude ; that an unholy sovereign of the universe would fill created intelligences with consternation and despair. Infinite justice and infinite love are also perfec- tions of Him who " inhabiteth eternity." And these are attributes with which the destiny of mor- tals is more especially connected. Yet fallen man could not have discovered them by the light of na- ture. Aside from the Bible, reason knows nothing of the attributes of God, except from their display in this lower world. She can argue of things in- visible only from things that are seen. She holds no converse with the inhabitants of other spheres. Into the annals of eternity she cannot peer, without the aid of the Gospel. Limiting her views to this poor world, reason must hesitate in her conclusion, that its Governor is a being of never-sleeping jus- tice. In his distribution of rewards and punish- ments, he takes not counsel of her. With the thunderbolt in his right hand, he has stood by in seeming indifference, while might has been tramp- ling on right ever since the days of Eden. Though not a sparrow falleth to the ground without his notice, the great historic tragedy of injustice, crime, 90 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. and woe has been recklessly enacted in the face of heaven, without let or hindrance, for near six thousand years. Nor could reason, with vision confined to earth, infer more favorably of the infinite love of Jehovah. Her native incredulity must prompt inquiries be- yond her power to solve. If " God is love," why has he not caused this orb, made by his hands, and governed by his power, to remain, as it was in the be- ginning, " the garden of the Lord ?" Whence come frightful and destroying earthquakes ? Whence volcanic outbreaks, burying towns and cities in a fiery deluge ? War, famine, and pestilence — are they not his willing slaves ? And why are these ministers of vengeance so often sent forth to deso- late the earth, if indeed " God is love ?" Eternity is the only clue to the labyrinth of time. That clue is beyond the grasp of uninspired reason. She has no syllogism in her ample storehouse, by which to prove the existence of a world beyond the grave. The renowned philosophers of classic Greece could not by searching find out « The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveller returns." Even the magnificent intellect of the Roman Tully, THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 91 SO " rich with the spoils of time," was obhged to confess its inability to decide whether the immor- tahty of the soul was a pleasing dream or a glorious reality. Before inspiration dawned, man had, in every age, and every clime, sought, as for his life, but sought in vain, to discover whether the grave is not the place of eternal sleep. His signal failure, so universal and long continued, even when aided by the lights of boasted science, demonstrates that the human intellect is not competent of itself to ascertain its own eternity. But when the Gospel superadded her voice to the deep whisperings of nature, the candid mind could not distrust the united proofs that the soul is to live forever. It is only by the light of eternity that we can decipher and "justify the ways of God to man." The day of judgment is the true expositor of the mysteries of the divine government below. With- out the comment of that august day, the exhibitions in this province of the general empire would but dimly portray the moral attributes of Jehovah. Unless the retributions beyond the grave had been palpable to the vision of the sacred writers, they would scarcely have ventured to predicate of the Ruler of the universe infinite justice and infinite love. If the authors of the Gospel were but the 92 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. fabricators of a fiction, why should they have en- cumbered it with a gratuitous averment, perhaps in seeming colHsion with the demonstrations of earth ? It was the potency of truth shed abroad in their hearts by illumination from above, which com- pelled them to affirm that the justice and love of God are as infinite as his omniscience or almighti- ness. And even unregenerate reason must recog- nize and feel the reality of this sublime truth, if with meekness and candor she will lift her wondering eyes from time to eternity. The very style of the Bible, when it portrays the attributes of Jehovah, assumes a magnificence and grandeur above the reach of mortality. As the' sacred writers approach the awful theme, its divine majesty imparts an unearthly majesty to their dic- tion ; the shepherds and fishermen of Judea rise to an elevation of language never attained by the loftiest genius of classic antiquity. Homer is justly esteemed the first of heathen authors, and the de- lineation of the mythological gods always invoked his highest powers. His nod of Jove was vaunting- ly indicated by the pagan world as its grandest specimen of the sublime. The Athenian Phidias selected the passage as the subject of his matchless statue, in which he sought to embody the fabled THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 93 god of gods. The memorable passage is thus trans- lated by Pope : " He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows ; Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god ; High heaven with trembling the dread signal took, And all Olympus to the centre shook." With this boasted effusion of mythological sub- limity, compare the following extracts from Job, the Psalms, Isaiah, and Habakkuk. We have placed the extracts in juxtaposition, that their col- lective and overpowering grandeur may the more readily appear. " He removeth the mountains, and they know not ; he overturneth them in his anger ; he shaketh the earth out of her place, and the pillars thereof tremble ; he commandeth the sun, and it riseth not, and sealeth up the stars ; he alone spreadeth out the heavens and treadeth upon the waves of the sea."* " Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no covering ; he stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing; he bindeth up the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them."f * Job ix. 4 to 12. t Job xxvL 6, 7, 8. 94 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. " In my distress, I called unto the Lord, and cried unto my God. He heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him even into his ears. Then the earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth de- voured ; coals were kindled by it. He bowed the heavens also and came down, and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place ; his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the sky."* " O Lord my God, thou art very great, thou art clothed with honor and majesty; who coverest thyself with light as with a garment, who stretcheth out the heavens like a curtain ; who layetli the beams of his chambers in the waters, who maketh the clouds his chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind ; who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire ; who laid the foundations of the earth that it should not be re- moved forever. Thou coverest it with the deep' as with a garment; the waters stood above the * Psalms xviil 6 to 12. THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 95 mountains. At thy rebuke they fled, at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away."*' "Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance ? Behold the nations are as a drop of the bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance ; behold he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in."f " He stood and measured the earth ; he beheld and drove asunder the nations ; and the everlasting mountains were scattered, the perpetual hills did bow ; his ways are everlasting. Was the Lord displeased against the rivers, was thine anger against the rivers, was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salva- tion ? The mountains saw thee and they trembled, the overflowing of the water passed by ; the deep uttered his voice and Ufted up his hands on high."t * Psalms civ. 1 to 8. f Isaiah jd. 12, 15, 22. X Habakkuk iiL 6, 8, 10. / 96 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Our selection of these passages from the Jewish Scriptures ought not to be regarded as a deviation from the direct Hne of our argument. The union between the Old Testament and the New is indis- soluble ; and any internal proof of the inspiration of " The Law and the Prophets/' tends to confirm the internal evidences of the inspiration of the Gospel. The redemption of the world by the vicarious sufferings of Jesus Christ, is a vital element of Gos- pel theology. The incarnation of the second per- son of the Trinity is, doubtless, the greatest prod- igy the universe ever beheld. Compared with this wonder of wonders, the other miracles recorded in the Gospel, such as the healing of the sick, the control of the angry elements, and the resurrection of the dead, lose their resplendence, as " the stars hide their diminished heads" in the presence of the sun. It is not to be disguised that the immolation of an incarnate God for human sin was an event well calculated to awaken the incredulity of the natural heart. We need not be greatly surprised that it appeared " unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks fooUshness." Its seeming impossibility has been the stronghold of infidelity for eighteen centuries. And there are twilight moments when even the faith of the pious chris- THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 97 tian is ready to falter and to faint, as he attempts to grasp the stupendous thought of having been pur- chased by the blood of God. The astounding tale of the descent, incarnation, sufferings and death of the coeternal and coequal Son of the Highest, would not have been admitted into a work of fiction, fabricated by adroit impos- tors, and wearing the name of truth. If the Gos- pel is a fable, the attribute of matchless skill must be freely awarded to its authors. If it is not the inspiration of God, it looks down from its "bad eminence" of deceit and Jiypocrisy, as from a mountain height, upon all the other efforts of the human mind. It is almost equally miraculous, whether viewed as a divine or as a mortal produc- tion. Hell is not too deep, nor heaven too high, nor earth too broad for its grasp. It scans time as a speck in its horizon, and is familiarly at home in the bosom of eternity. With an unfaltering hand it delineates the attributes of " the unknown God," and the picture bears on its face the indelible stamp of verity. It dissects the moral anatomy of our being, as its material structure was never laid open by the scientific knife. " Know thyself," was an abstract proverb of Grecian wisdom. " Ex- amine yourselves," is a mandate of the Gospel, not 98 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. left by her as a cold abstraction. She holds up to man a glass in which are presented his spiritual form and features, large and true as life. In the mirror of the Gospel he may study the secrets of his own nature better than in the multitudinous libraries of classic learning. If the Gospel is a fable, the great artificers who fabricated it must have been profoundly intimate with the principles of our common being, and with the long-established laws of fiction. They well knew that verisimilitude is vitally essential to such fictitious writings as would assume the passport of truth, and that, to gain even a temporary mastery over the pride of intellect, falsehood must needs dissever itself from improbability. Even the po- etic muse, with all her license and all her witchery, must, to maintain her sway when she gives "to airy nothing a local habitation and a name," array her fairy thoughts in the counterfeited semblance of truth. Would she dally with the understanding, and for awhile beguile its faith, she must not insult it with wanton infractions of common-place prob- ability. If the writers of the Gospel had sought to be the authors of a theological romance, they need not have startled the native skepticism of the hu- man heart by calling down a God from his throne. THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 99 It was not necessary for the success of the romance, that its hero should be the second person of the Trinity. A perfect man, or an angel exalted as far above Gabriel as he is above mortality, might have been presented as the preacher and pattern of a loftier faith and purer code of ethics than time had before known. Thus modified, the spiritual fable might have been accommodated by its match- less authors to the prejudices of the Jews and to the pride of the gentiles. The phantom bark might have been sent along the flood of time, impelled by the favoring breezes of human passion, and the current, deep and strong, of the carnal heart. It was not the caprice of man, but the almighti- ness of truth, which imparted to the scriptural scheme of redemption the seemingly incredible mystery of its vicarious sacrifice. Had the Gos- pel been a fiction, it would not have been made to rest on the miraculous conception of the Son of God, his manger-birth, his servile toil, his abject poverty, his bloody sweat, his voluntary submis- sion to scoffings, scourgings, spittings, and igno- minious crucifixion. Borne down by such apparent impossibilities, fiction must have sunk under its own weight, as the stone sinks in the waves, unless sustained by a succession of corroborative miracles. 100 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. And its authors could not have imagined that the God of truth would suspend or vary the fixed laws of His empire to authenticate a cunningly-devised fable. Yet the Gospel confidently predicted its speedy and wide difiusion. Had twice ten years rolled away without a multiplication of proselytes, it must have fallen a victim to its own falsified pre- dictions, and overwhelmed its fabricators with the contempt and vengeance of an insulted and infuri- ated world. The authors of the Gospel were either inspired or mad. Its very improbabilities confirm its truth. Heathen mythology represented, indeed, that its fabled gods sometimes assumed the form and habi- tations of men. But such transformations had not self-immolation for their object. Classic fable never pretended that any of her deities descended to earth and borrowed the garb of humanity, merely to suffer and to die. The crucifixion of the " Lord of glory" was an original conception of the Bible. Should the legendary lore of the olden time have intimated that the Olympic Jove, or the Hindoo Vishnu, had arrayed himself in flesh, and lived, and suffered, and died, as the Gospel affirms that its in- carnate Jehovah lived and suffered and died, the conceit would have been held too extravagant for THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 101 the indulgent faith of pagan Greece, or even for the passive credulity of oriental climes. But although the incarnation of the uncreated Son would not have been devised for a fiction claiming to be true, and intended for general diffu- sion and belief, yet if reason will study the sacred theme by the scriptural lamp, with the diligence, fidelity and candor bestowed upon the sciences of earth, she must perceive in the Gospel scheme of salvation " the power of God and the wisdom of God." Enlightened by the rays of the " Sun of righteousness," she cannot withhold her credence to the tremendous truths that God is infinitely holy and just, as well as infinitely merciful ; that the human race, with souls immortal, are at enmity with their Creator ; and that such enmity, if con- tinued, must inevitably draw upon them eternal perdition. Then how could infinite love receive into its bosom sinful and polluted creatures without staining the purity of infinite holiness and infinite justice? This is a problem which earth could never have solved ; but earth, divested of her prej- udice and pride, may see and admire the wisdom of the heavenly solution. That God could not forgive iniquity without ade- quate satisfaction, is a scriptural truism which 102 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. reason might, perhaps, have inferred from the Hght of nature. The capricious pardon of offences would shake the pillars even of earthly jurispru- dence. How much less compatible would it be with the unchangeable jurisprudence of heaven! Suffering is the appropriate penalty of sin. If offenders are to be delivered from the penalty, their deliverance can only be effected by the vicarious suffering of a sinless substitute. But where was to be found a sinless substitute of adequate dignity to atone for the iniquities of a world ? The vicarious sufferings of an insect of the field, and the vicarious sufferings of legions of archangels would have been alike inefficacious. Nothing but the expiatory agonies of an incarnate God could have satisfied the awful justice of an offended God. Love prevailed, known only in the pavilion of the Trinity. Its second glorious person made himself the voluntary substitute for transgressors. Man had rebelled, and God forgave. On Calvary was displayed the resplendent rainbow of divine perfections, blending in ineffable harmony infinite justice, infinite wisdom, and infinite love. On this phenomenon of the uni- verse, "new and strange," in the flight of never- beginning ages, the hierarchies of heaven will ever gaze with holy curiosity, wonder, and delight. W THE THEOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL. 103 Uninspired reason would never have soared on its own wings to the mighty thought of the incar- nation and sufferings of the Creator of the worlds. In exploring the human heart, it could have found there no pulsation prompting the conception of that love which brought down to earth the Son of God to die for his enemies the death foreshadowed by the bloody sweat of Gethsemane. Reason must, indeed, admire the salvation proclaimed in the Gospel, as the astronomer admires the spangled heavens ; but reason could no more have con- trived that salvation than the astronomer could have formed a star. The personality and agencies of the Holy Ghost constitute the third department of evangelical theology. The union of three divine persons in one God, each entitled to the adoration of the uni- verse — each self-existent, eternal, omnipresent, om- niscient — is the most incomprehensible doctrine of our holy religion. Though to the believer un- speakably precious, this primary article of evangel- ical truth has ever been to reasoning pride " a rock of offence." Unitarianism was from the beginning the besetting heresy of Christendom ; and it threat- ened for centuries to swallow up the true faith. Aware of the repugnance of the human mind to 104 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. give credence to what it cannot comprehend, the Arabian deceiver, though he professed belief in the inspiration of the Bible, repudiated the doctrine of the Trinity, and thus facilitated the triumphs of the Koran over kingdoms and continents. Had the Gospel been a fable, its fabricators would not have made the plurality of the persons of the Godhead a prominent article of their creed. It was the inspi- ration of heaven, and not the craft of earth, that announced the existence, and commanded the equal and undivided worship of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, One in Three, and Three in One. The startling mystery would have been eschewed by the cunning of adroit impostors, combined to give wide currency to a fiction which arrogated the character of truth. The agencies of the Holy Spirit, in the work of redemption, will constitute the subject of a future and distinct chapter. . CHAPTER V. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. Gospel system of ethics like solar system in fewness and simplicity of its principles — Consists in love to God and love to man — Reg- ulates thoughts and intents of heart^Disclaims heroic virtues — Places humility in front rank of its graces — Has chivalry of its own — Paul and Julius Caesar contrasted — Other evangelical graces — Forgiveness of injuries — Universal beneficence — Victory over world— Sanctions of Gospel. There is a striking analogy in their simplicity and grandeur, between the moral and the physical works of the Creator. How symmetrical, how ma- jestic, are the movements of the planetary spheres ! And yet they are impelled and governed by two very simple principles ; the discursive, technically called the centrifugal force, and the attraction of gravitation ; the former urging them onward into the regions of space, and the latter causing them to revolve harmoniously round the central sun. Prin- ciples equally limited in number, still more simple in character, and intelligible as daylight to the in- tellect of early childhood, form the ruling elements of the Gospel system. " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, 5* OF T^j^K 106 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. * and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it ; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."* Thus did Jesus Christ declare that love to God and love to man were the two constituents, potent yet simple, of his divine system ; the love to man being its discursive force, and the love to God its gravitating power; the former expanding the soul into general philanthropy, the latter drawing it home to the central Sun of righteousness. Had not " sin marred all," the love to God and the love to man would have preserved the same sublime har- mony in the moral system that the propelling and the attractive forces have produced in the physical. But sin was a malign comet, loosened from its orbit, and carrying in its lawless track dismay and destruction. The obligation of supreme affection to the Crea- tor and Governor of the universe was developed by the Gospel and her Jewish predecessor. It lay not within the ken of the uninspired intellect. Fallen reason could no more have discovered it in all its * Matthew xxil 31, 88, 89. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 107 bearings, than the naked eye could have discovered the existence and energies of physical gravitation. The material telescope was necessary for the one discovery ; the scriptural telescope for the other. The light of depraved nature failed to ascertain the perfections of the true God. How then could it have ascertained the obligation of the creature to love him with all the heart, and with all the soul, and with all the mind ? The very multifariousness of the heathen divinities precluded the possibility of concentrated affection for any one of them. Athens recognized thirty thousand false deities* Hence the prevalent saying that, in the city of Minerva, it was easier to find a god than a man. The saying might have been of Egyptian origin ; but it found a congenial domicil in classic Greece. Yet since Revelation has unfolded the being and perfections of the true God, even fallen reason must perceive and admit the obligation of loving him with supreme devotion. The Creator justly claims the homage of his rational creatures ; and the in- terchange of love between him and the intellectual emanations of himself is the silken cord, stronger than chain of iron, which should bind together the diversified ranks of spiritual being. There is a transforming power in love. Even love to the 108 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. creature assimilates us to the object beloved. Love to God restores to the renovated soul the image and likeness of its Creator, which sin had defaced. If the philosopher or patriot would elevate to its true standard the dignity of human nature, let him press home the obligation of the first and great commandment of the Gospel. Love to God is the food on which angels feed ; and if it universally be- came the spiritual aliment of earth, it would trans- mute mortals into the similitude of the cherubim and seraphim. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," was a mandate promulgated by the Gospel. It was unknown to the heathen world. Before the great moral Luminary appeared above the horizon, self was the ruling god of this world. Poetry decked with her own never-fading wreaths the brow of the idol. The immortal heroes of the Grecian and Ro- man epic were just as selfish as was the Stygian hero of Milton's Paradise Lost. Even history has condescended to hide the idol's deformity under dazzUng appellations. It was selfishness that moved Alexander to conquer the world, and then to weep that he had not another world to conquer. It was not to save his country, but to serve himself, that Csesar passed the Rubicon. Yet has history THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 109 baptized the ambition of conquerors with the name of heroism ! It is a baptism of blood. The Gospel held no dalliance with idolatry in any of its modifications. It commanded selfishness to pluck out its right eye, to cut off its right hand. It said to the ruling god of this world, " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." It interdicted not a moderated self-love. On the contrary, it declared, " if any provide not for his own" he " is worse than an infidel." But it required that love of self and love of human kind should be regulated by the same just standard. Selfishness is but the syno- nyme of sin. For its own gratification it would scatter through the universe " fire-brands, arrows, and death," and in the midst of the ruins would cry, " Am I not in sport ?" It once attempted to de- molish the eternal throne. Satan was the father, and is the mirror of selfishness. Let the idolaters of self contemplate his hideous lineaments, and be- hold themselves as in a glass. The name of selfishness survives in heaven only as a beacon to check the incipient movements of forbidden desire. Angels love their fellows as themselves ; and so should mortals love their neigh- bors. And the evangelical meaning of the term neighbor embraces the whole human family. 110 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Should all of terrestrial birth yield cordial allegiance to the second, as well as to the first great command- ment of the Gospel — should selfishness in all its forms be dragged forth from its hiding-places and sacrificed upon the altar of universal philanthropy, what a change would pass over the moral aspect of our world ! The clangor of war would be hushed ; the breath of slander ride no longer " on the posting winds ;" the descendants of the primi- tive pair would become brethren in affection as well as in lineage ; and earth would bloom again into its original Eden. The two great commandments of the Gospel are " like unto" each other ; their simihtude is af- firmed by their divine Author. Love is their common lever; it is the impulsive principle by which the Gospel moves the world. Even religion is nothing without love. Though it has the gift of prophecy, and understands all mysteries and all knowledge, and has faith so that it could remove mountains ; though it bestows all its goods to feed the poor, and gives its body to be burned; yet, without love, it is " as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." Love is the soul of the universe. God is Love and Love is God. It was Love that form- ed the worlds and peopled them with intelligent THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. HI beings capable of worshipping and serving their Creator. When man had fallen, it was Love that achieved his redemption; it was Love that sweated forth blood in the garddh ; it was Love that hung suspended, a voluntary victim, upon the cross. In his palmy state of primeval innocence, man was love. Made in the image and after the like- ness of his Creator, love was the controlling element of his nature. As God is love in infinitude, man was love in miniature. But the poison of sin transmuted into idolatrous selfishness his originally pure and expansive affections. It was the benign object of the Gospel to restore the predominance of holy love in the human bosom. Hence its two great commandments, comprising within their am- ple purview the whole compass of mortal duties. In love to God and love to man consists the entire system of evangelical ethics. The Gospel's mighty lever is original and unique. Equally original and unique is the locality of its influences. Civil legislation aims only at the outer man. It aspires not to cleanse the turbid fountain within. The legislation of Jesus Christ grapples with the heart. It regulates "the thoughts and intents." It was the heart that the fall contami- nated ; it is the heart that the Gospel seeks to cure. 112 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Jesus Christ "knew what was in man;" He was profoundly skilled in the spiritual anatomy of the being made by his own hands ; He well under- stood that the heart holds the same central position in our moral system as in our physical ; that in both it is the spring of action — the citadel of life. He declared, " Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false wit- ness, blasphemies : these are the things which de- file a man."* And of external sanctity, covering spiritual corruption. He affirmed that it was " like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beau- tiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness."t The morality of the Gospel is a new edition of the law of Sinai, revised, interpreted, and expanded by its author. " Thou shalt not commit adultery," was thundered forth from the quaking mount. The Gospel brought home to the very citadel of life Sinai's awful mandate, "Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." From the great fountain of the heart, poisoned by sin, flow all the impure torrents and rivulets of human ac- * Matthew xv. 19, 20. f Matthew xxiil 2*7. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 113 tion and thought. Into this reservoir of pollution the Gospel casts its healing medicines. The om- niscient Physician never forgot that the purification of the fountain was the only appropriate means of purifying the streams. Frigid will ever be that system of morality, which " Plays round the head but comes not to the heart" Necessarily cold and inefficient must be a code of ethical abstractions deriving no warmth from the affections. Holy love, shed abroad in the soul, can alone secure the faithful performance of all the social and religious duties. The moral lever of the Gospel fails not, like the lever of Archimedes, for want of a place whereon to stand. It is self- poised on its own sure foundations of love to God and love for man. The contrast between the practical operation of heathen ethics and of the ethics of the Gospel, shows that the source of the one is terrestrial, and that the source of the other must be divine. What has the code of polytheism ever achieved for the reformation of humankind? Yet within the first half-century of its existence the faith of the car- penter's Son accomplished a moral revolution of the 114 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. world, no less miraculous than his healing the sick, controlling the elements, and raising the dead. " See how these christians live" — " See how these christians die" — were appeals to infidelity by the infant church, perhaps more heart-touching and efficient than any of its ordinary signs and won- ders. Even the unbelieving Gibbon admits and affects to eulogize the sanctity of the primitive faithful ; and assigns that sanctity as one of his five causes of the Gospel's early and astounding spread. Christianity disclaims what are called, in classic language, the heroic virtues. Among these alleged virtues is ranked the love of fame. It was the most stirring impulse of heathen antiquity. To the good opinion of his fellow- mortals, the christian is not indifferent. Yet thirst of earthly renown cannot become the absorbing principle of him who aspires after "a crown of glory that fadeth not away." Revenge was a passion of the pagans, sanctioned by the example of their gods. It was the choicest beverage of unbaptized humanity. More unrelenting than death, it often wreaked its vengeance on the dead. Homer's Achilles, though, perhaps, a fictitious character, was drawn by the hand of a master in strict accordance with the sen- timents of heathen antiquity. It offended not the THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 115 taste of refined Athens, nor that of chivalrous Rome. Yet the Achilles of Homer, in the very eye of parental and conjugal affection outraged and frantic, dragged at his horse's heels round the walls of Troy, the lifeless body of his gallant rival. How hostile is the passion of revenge to the ethics of Him, who laid down his life for his enemies! Martial heroism stood at the very head of heathen perfections. Adulation pursued the blood-stained footsteps of the conqueror while he lived; and when he had waded through slaughter to the grave, the voice of millions raised him to the skies, and worshipped him as a god. But martial heroism found no place in the peaceful ethics of the cross. Our hmits allow not a detailed examination of all the christian graces. We can but glance at a few of them. And as we approach the lovely group, our eyes repose with complacency on humil- ity's modest and retiring form. " Blessed are the poor in spirit," was the first of the beatitudes of the mount. The great Schoolmaster, who taught by example as well as precept, was himself "meek and lowly in heart." Humility had no place in the ethics of polytheism. The unpretending virtue would have been deemed pusillanimous by classic antiquity. It is a flower uncongenial to earth ; its 116 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. native soil is heaven ; it v^as transplanted into our sphere from the skies. No pagan sage v^^ould have incorporated into his ethical code the injunction, so opposed to the impulses of the natural heart, " Who- soever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." But even reason, v^hen enlightened by the lamp of Revelation, must perceive that humility is an appropriate and primary element in a moral system v^hose centre is the Sun of righteousness. Supreme love of God must be preceded and accompanied by- the knov^ledge of his perfections. And v^ho can steadfastly contemplate the glorious perfections of Jehovah, without a deep sense of self-abasement ? Job exclaimed, " I have heard of thee by the hear- ing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth thee ; where- fore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."* Humility increases in the soul, in exact proportion to its increase in the knowledge and love of Him who governs the universe. The saint in heaven is doubtless humbler than the saint on earth. In the ascending ranks of angels and archangels, of cher- ubim and seraphim, of principalities and powers, we may believe that humility augments with each * Job xlii. 5, 6. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 117 successive grade of the ascent, from the subaltern ^irits that watch the celestial gates, to " Gabriel" that stands "in the presence of God." And if pride is abhorrent to a holy creature who has never swerved from his " first estate," how unbecoming must it be to a fallen sinner, rescued from perdition by the free and sovereign grace of God ! The heroism of the Gospel claims brotherhood with its humility. There is a christian as well as a martial chivalry. Truthless is the taunt of infi- delity, that the faith of the cross, though it may have produced martyrs, never produced heroes. True heroism consists in the dedication of the soul to some lofty and worthy object, and its undeviat- ing pursuit of that object in defiance of privations, hardships, dangers, and death. In all these attri- butes of greatness, the primitive heroes of Christian- ity looked down, as from a celestial elevation, upon the warlike heroes bodied forth in profane history and classic fiction. Take as an example, the tent-maker of Corinth. Compare the chivalrous Paul with the mightiest of the Caesars. Both excelled in extent of mental attainments, in glowing eloquence, in loftiness of imagination, in profoundness of intellect, in un- daunted intrepidity. But here ceased the simili- 118 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. tude. Julius worshipped self as his only god. Paul was the devoted, the disinterested worshipper of Him who "sitteth in the heavens." He of Rome sought " To wade through slaughter to a throne, And shut the gates of mercy on mankind." He of Tarsus untiringly strove, at every personal sacrifice, to conduct a fallen race to the portals of paradise. The writings of Caesar abound in start- ling egotisms. Paul rarely indulged in holy boast- ing. But he ever gloried in sufferings of which unsanctified humanity would have been ashamed. "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods ; once was I stoned ; thrice I suffered shipwreck ; a night and a day have I been in the deep ; in journeyings often ; in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wil- derness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren ; in weariness and painfulness, in watch- ings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often,- in cold and nakedness."* * 2 Corinthians xi. 24-28. n THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 119 Had not this thrilling account of the tent-maker been true, its falsity would have been detected and exposed by the Corinthians, to whom it was written, and who were intimately acquainted with the bi- ography of the writer. His stoning, his shipwrecks, his weariness and painfulness, his hunger and thirst, his watchings, fastings and nakedness, his perils of water and of cold, of robbers, of his own country- men, of false brethren, and of the heathen, of the city and of the wilderness, we pass over without special comment ; for they did not necessarily im- ply disgrace. But the champion of the cross was thrice beaten with rods ; five times received he forty lashes save one. These inflictions left stains more corroding than their wounds : they have immemorially been assigned as the ignominious punishments of the basest crimes. The unregene- rate brave have sometimes sought " The bubble reputation even in the cannon's mouth." But nothing save the heroism of the Gospel ever voluntarily and repeatedly encountered the felon's stripes. Forgiveness of injuries is another constituent of evangelical morals. It is a duty urged in the Gos- pel with peculiar emphasis. "If ye forgive men 120 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."* " And his Lord was wroth, and de- livered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him ; so likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their tres- passes."t In the form of prayer taught by our Lord, we are commanded to say, "And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors." Thus our peti- tion to God for the forgiveness of ourselves is based on the express condition that we forgive our ene- mies. How can this daily prayer be uttered with- out palsying the tongue of the supplicant, if his own heart remains unforgiving and relentless ? In this prayer of prayers, Christ assimilated the human forgiveness of injuries to the divine forgiveness of the sins of the world. The one is, indeed, a drop, the othei* a shoreless ocean of grace! But the drop and the ocean are kindred in nature, though differing infinitely in degree. Man becomes god- like when he imitates the pardoning attribute of God. But what sage of polytheism ever discovered * Matthew vi 14, 15. f Matthew xviiL 34, 35. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 121 and proclaimed the elemental principle of universal ethics, binding from the creation of humankind, and requiring man to forgive from his heart his offending fellows, not until seven times only, " but until seventy times seven?" Universal beneficence is a vital element of Gos- pel morals. Jesus Christ represents the exercise of this virtue as the severing test between the righteous and the wicked, in the great and terrible day of final retribution. " Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was an hungered and ye gave me meat ; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger and ye took me in ; naked and ye clothed me ; I was sick and ye visited me ; I was in prison and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered and fed thee? or thirsty and gave thee drin^J^' When saw we thee a stranger and took thee in ? or naked and clothed thee? or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them. Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have 6 122 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. done it unto me."* In this passage, so tran- scendant for simplicity, pathos and awful grandeur, our blessed Saviour singled out beneficence as the passport to everlasting bliss, not because it is the only virtue in the evangejical code, but because its habitual exercise is the sure token of the presence of all its sister graces. The duty of christian beneficence is not con- fined to alms-giving. "Like the gentle rain of heaven," its genial influences pervade the universal soil, parched and illimitable, of human wants. It has given eyes to the blind, and ears to the deaf, and a tongue to the dumb ; created hospitals for the sick, and cast its maternal mantle over the de- mented. It has poured its illuminating rays upon the benighted mind ; erected schools for the juve- nile poor, and thrown open its colleges for the free Ij^ instruction of generous aspirants after knowledge in the higher grades. But it is in the relief of spiritual maladies that the energy of christian beneficence has been most strikingly displayed. For the salvation of souls what toils, what hardships, what " most disastrous chances" has it not joyously encountered ? After ♦ Matthew xxv. 34-41. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 123 the first few centuries of Christianity had elapsed, its progress in the heaHng of the nations became, indeed, for a long while slow and hesitating. But on these latter times a glorious light is dawning. Princes have become "nursing fathers" to evan- gelizing beneficence. Commerce, its faithful hand- maiden, is whitening all the seas ; wonder-working steam lends it all her potency ; and the lightning of heaven has promised it her wings. Beneficence was a stranger to polytheism. Classic antiquity had no schools for the poor ; no hospitals for the diseased ; no Howard for the prison-houses. She left to heartless avarice, steeled even against parental and filial ties, the lives of her helpless infants and aged. Her favorite recreations were gladiatorial murders. If she visited distant climes, it was to slaughter the doomed inhabitants, or make them slaves. With the mighty hope of renovating a fallen race her bosom never glowed. The Gospel commands us to ^overcome the world. The conquest enjoined is not like that to which Napoleon aspired, and which the son of Philip achieved. The world to be conquered is the little world within ourselves. Such victory is more illustrious than was ever accomplished by "gar- ments rolled in blood." " He that ruleth his spirit 124 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. is better than he that taketh a city."* It was an adage of lettered antiquity, that a good man strug- gling with adverse fortune, was a spectacle recrea- ting even to the gods. But man's most glorious achievement is the mastery of himself. He who by divine grace can successfully say to the stormy passions of his own soul, " Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further ; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed,"-|- is an object upon whom, not the false gods of polytheism, but the Jehovah of the Bible, can look down with complacency. Such conquest of self is an indispensable prelim- inary to the favor of heaven. The unholy desires of the miniature world within us must be reclaimed, its lusts exterminated, its strong citadel of selfish- ness razed to the ground, or we cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Unprejudiced reason, with the Gospel shining around her, must perceive the necessity of moral renovation here as a preparative for bliss hereafter. For how could impenitent sin commingle through endless ages with immaculate holiness ? Such moral renovation was a stranger even to the dreams of heathen antiquity. Her ferocious warriors she sent to elysium red from the * Proverbs xvL 82. f Job xxxviil 11. THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 125 fields of their wanton and murderous slaughter; her profligate kings and emperors she transformed to deities when earth could no longer endure the burden of their presence. The sanctions of the christian code bear evident marks of heavenly lineage. By the sanctions of a law are meant its rewards for obedience, and its penalties for transgression ; the former called remu- neratory, the latter vindicatory. An edict without sanctions is but naked advice; its obedience or disobedience depending on the vohtion of those to whom it is addressed. Human sanctions rely for their efficiency upon extraneous proofs ; without the aid of auxiliary evidence, they must remain utterly powerless, especially in the vindicatory, which is their principal department. In a land filled with all the complicated machinery of courts and of prisons, transgression may walk in triumph, if, by the stealthiness of its steps or the adroitness of its disguises, it can lull the inattentive ear and beguile the unsuspicious eye. Even where the evidence of guilt is clear, municipal sanctions are often eluded by flight, and sometimes resisted by force. They penetrate not the secret chambers of guilt ; the hidden springs of crime are beyond their grasp ; they enter not the deep and dark laborato- 126 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. ries of the heart ; they reach not beyond the brief span of mortal Ufe. The sanctions of the evangehcal code pervade the innermost " thoughts and intents." None can resist them by force, or avoid them by flight, or elude them by craft. They invoke the hopes and the terrors of eternity. They require the aid of no extraneous proofs. The omniscient eye, doth it not see ? The omnipresent ear, doth it not hear ? The omnipotent arm, v^^ho can w^ithstand? The Book of God's Remembrance, w^ho w^ill gainsay ? That dread Volume records even the most secret aspirations of unembodied guilt; and there are registered each vv^idow's mite cast into the treasury of benevolence, and every cup of cold water given to any of Christ's little ones in the name of a dis- ciple. The Judgment of the Great Day is the most aw- ful conception that ever dilated the human mind. How puerile, how despicable, were the tribunals of heathen gods, erected by classic polytheism for the sentence of departed spirits ! Yet were they decked with all " the pride, pomp, and circumstance" which the uninspired imagination could conceive. The Judgment Scene of the Gospel is an original delin- eation achieved by no mortal pencil. Without .THE MORALITY OF THE GOSPEL. 127 divine teachings, it was impossible that in repre- senting the award of final retributions to human kind, the unlettered fishermen of Galilee should so immeasurably have transcended, in simplicity, in pathos, in unearthly grandeur, all the imaginings of Homer, of Plato, and of Virgil. The combined skill of ages has been exercised to surround terres- trial courts with whatever can excite respect, ven- eration, or awe. Yet how do the courts of earth sink into nothingness compared with the Grand Assize of the Son of God, when he shall come to judgment on his throne of clouds, with the hosts of heaven in his train, preceded by the archangel's trump, and met by the thronging dead ! Without teachings from above, the peasants of Judea could have delineated the scriptural picture of the final advent of the Judge of all the earth, no more than they could " thunder with a voice like Him."* * Job xL 9. CHAPTER VI. THE CHABACTEB, OF JESUS OHEIST. Difficulty of delineating character — Especially that of perfect man — Delineation of perfect man reserved for fishermen of Galilee — They had no model — Difficulty enchanced by the fact that the Christ of the Gospel enshrined the second person of the Trinity — Infidelity gains nothing by supposing that Christ was the deceiver and his biographers the dupes — Enacting perfect character more difficult than even dehneation of one — His blended meekness, low- liness, and majesty — ^His humiliation surpassed what mere man would have voluntarily endured or conceived — His piety — His benignity — His beneficence — Cases of Bartimeus — The sinful woman who anointed his feet — The prodigal son — His restoring La^iarus to life — His weeping over Jerusalem. The power of delineating character with truth and vividness, is one of the rarest attributes of ge- nius. To this attribute the great historians of an- cient and modern times are indebted for their fame. It is this almost peerless attribute which has clothed with immortality the few imaginative writers who have triumphed over the ravages of time. To create a hero and sustain his consistency in all the varied relations of life, requires a discrimination of intellect, an accuracy of judgment, and a plastic power of fancy, seldom vouchsafed to mortals. And of all fictitious characters of earthly mould, THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 129 the most difficult to draw would doubtless be that of a perfect man. In the light and shades of a mixed character, compounded of good and evil, slight inaccuracies might escape detection. But in the pure white of the portraiture of a perfect man, the slightest blemish must be palpable to sight. The successful delineation of personified perfection in the multifarious vicissitudes of life, is a consumma- tion to which the uninpsired imagination could not attain. And profane history has not, in her ample confines, a single original of immaculate excellence to portray. The biography of a perfect man was reserved for the unlettered peasants of Judea. They had no model of terrestrial lineage to imitate. Sin had blotted out Eden. Ideal perfection was a phantom varying with climes and epochs ; one thing at clas- sic Athens, another at iron-bound Sparta, and yet another in majestic Rome. The evangelists, un- less they drew from life, had nothing to guide them but the ignis fatuus of their own wild imagina- tions. Yet of their perfect man they were to form, not merely one moral picture representing him at a single point of his being, but a series of original drawings delineating his whole diversified progress from the cradle to the tomb. And they were to 6* 130 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. draw, not for Palestine alone, but for the world ; not for their own age only, but for all the succeed- ing centuries of time. The evangeUcal historians essayed a still bolder flight. They affirmed that their perfect man en- shrined the second person of the Trinity ; that the Christ of the Gospel was the Word made flesh ; the son of Mary, and at the same time the uncreated Son of the Highest; born in a manger, and yet inhabit- ing the earliest eternity ; a carpenter on earth, and yet the Framer of the heavens. The illiterate peasants of Judea assumed the biography of Je- hovah clothed in humanity. If the Gospel is an imposture, its authors must have originated the un- earthly conception of the incarnation of Him who " thought it not robbery to be equal with God.*' And this conception so much above the sphere of mortal intellect, was but the prelude to the mightier task which lay before them. They had to conduct from the manger to the cross the complex Being of their conception, and to make him speak and act and suffer, and die, as became an incarnate Deity. He was not to be represented as " the high and lofty One," throned in heaven ; but as manifesting himself to the children of humanity as the infinite Word never manifested himself to his creatures THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 131 until he became flesh and dwelt among them. The thoughts and emotions, the language and deeds, of their original and unique Personage, were to be as original and unique as the constitution of his mys- terious being. In all the varieties of his life he was to blend harmoniously the almightiness and majesty of a God with the feebleness and humility of a man. The consistency of this awful Being was to be maintained with an untiring eye and unfaltering hand, in his birth, in the expansion of his youth, in the maturity of his manhood, in his arrest, trial and crucifixion. Such a picture, blending godhead and manhood, earth and heaven, with perfect distinct- ness and concord, could have been drawn only by the pencil of the Holy Ghost. The picture has been hung on high for the world to gaze at. It has riveted the profound criticism of eighteen centu- ries. No blemish in it has been found. And yet in such a picture, a blemish would be as palpable as a spot on the luminary of day. No uninspired effort could have achieved the scriptural delineation of Jesus Christ. Mortal pen- cil cannot paint a God. That the delineation has so long commanded reason's profoundest homage is no proof that it was the workmanship of reason. The human mind may appro ve^and admire what it 132 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. could never have originated. It could not have contrived the plan of the solar system ; yet it may contemplate w^ith v^onder and complacency its beauty, its magnificence, its divine architecture, when revealed by the power of the telescope. Infidelity can gain nothing by supposing that Jesus Christ was himself the impostor, and that his biographers were but the credulous dupes of decep- tion. Such a supposition would be placing unbelief on the more hopeless horn of a desperate dilemma. If the united efforts of his biographers could not I have conceived the character imputed to him in the I Sacred Volume, how could he himself) if human lonly, have conceived it ? If their uninspired hu- manity must needs have failed in delineating such a character, how could his humanity have enacted it in his own person without the aid of indwelhng divinity ? Upon the supposition that he was but a man, it is most unlikely that he should have im- agined the character with which the Gospel invests him; and if he had imagined the character, it is im- possible that he could have bodied it forth in consist- ent and harmonious action. To perform is more difficult than to conceive or to express. That with- out indwelling divinity, mortal man could have spo- ken the words, and done the deeds, and lived the life, THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 133 and died the death, predicated of Jesus Christ, is a theory involving a more stupendous miracle than any recorded in the Gospel. The incarnate God was "meek and lowly in heart." He was born in a manger, and wrapped in its straw. He toiled for years in the workshop of Joseph. Worse accommodated in his own world than the birds of the air or the foxes of the field, the Proprietor of the universe had not where to lay his head. At his last interview with the chosen twelve, the Lord of glory rose from supper, and took a towel and girded himself, and washed the feet of his betraying and deserting disciples. Though clothed in the mantle of omnipotence, he suffered himself to be arrested, reviled, buffeted, scourged, spitted on in the face, crucified between two thieves ! ^ Such meekness and lowliness were not creations of fancy. They pertain not to proud man even in thought. The carnal heart would deem them be- low the dignity of human nature. No writer of romance would have ventured to subject his chief character to the degradations voluntarily borne by jJesus Christ. Not the genius of Homer, or Virgil, of Dante, Boccacio, or Scott, could have saved from contempt and oblivion a work of fiction rep- 134 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. resenting its hero as the tame and wilHng recipient of scofRngs, and scourgings, and spittings. But the Hero of the Gospel was a God! His voluntary degradation was too profound for humanity to have endured — for humanity to have conceived. The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, is the absorbing marvel in the story of redeeming love. If faith but firmly grasps that wonder of wonders, it may contemplate with less amazement the subsequent miracles of his humilia- tion. The privations, insults and sufferings which he so meekly bore from his lowly birth to his ex- piring cry, were but subsidiary to the stupendous object of his becoming flesh. It might be expected of Him who had divested himself of " the form of God" for " the form of a servant," that his humilia- tion, infini^L in its commencement, should have continued iminite in all its after demonstrations. In keeping with his incarnation were the swaddling clothes of the manger, the robes of mockery, the crown of thorns, the crucifixion between malefac- tors. With the incarnation in full view, it seems not incredible to the awe-stricken imagination, that the God made flesh should have suffered asj man never suffered, and should have humbled him- self as man was never voluntarily humbled. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 135 Yet with all the meekness and lowliness of the incarnate God were harmoniously intermingled traits of majesty and of glory, which the uninspired child of humanity could no more have delineated than he could have painted to the life the arch of heaven. In all the scriptural canvass the de- scended Deity stands pre-eminently forth, veiled but not wholly concealed by his covering of flesh. His words and his deeds sustained his claim to oneness with the Father, and his assumption of the incommunicable name of the Old Testament, I AM. His unearthly teachings bear on their fore- head the awful impress of the Godhead. Well might the multitudes have exclaimed, that "he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." It was not the lore of earth, but the wisdom of heaven, that flowed from his lips. He wrought his daily miracles by the same unbor- rowed potency that said in the beginning, " Let there be light, and there was light." Of the celes- tial courts, he spoke with the familiar knowledge that a princely sojourner in a foreign clime might display in speaking of his paternal halls. His thrill- ing descriptions of the Final Judgment, surpassing in sublimity anything ever conceived by man, drew from him no elaboration of speech or pomp 136 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. of diction ; for that great event, in all its magnifi- cence, is to be a simple exertion of his wonted al- mightiness. The originality and perfection of Christ's char- acter will better appear from a review of some of its component elements. Our review must neces- sarily be brief The glowing theme might well be expanded into a volume. His piety was original, unique, perfect, godlike. It was not wont to display itself in ebullitions of rapture. The Saviour of the world was no fanat- ic ; deep, calm, wise, and practical was his devo- tion. Though the live-long night often witnessed on the cold mountain-top his solitary prayers, yet the return of morning ever found him restored to the busy haunts of life. He affected no austerities, no peculiarity of dress, language or manners ; his example afforded no model for ascetic mortifica- tions. His was the bland and cheerful holiness of God's right hand, condescending to dwell awhile on earth, full of grace and love. He mingled in familiar intercourse with the children of humanity. He came " eating and drinking ;" he mixed in scenes of innocent conviviahty; he sat down at meat with publicans and sinners. He sought no solitudes to dwell in ; he rejoiced " in the habitable # ■«' THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. part of his earth," and his " delights were with the sons of men."* The benignity of Jesus Christ was a distinguish- ing constituent of his character. We here allude, not so much to the infinitude of his compassion demonstrated in his incarnation and vicarious suf- ferings, as to those lesser graces, never to have been conceived by the human mind, which marked his whole philanthropic life. An atmosphere of holy love breathed constantly from his presence, as the rays of light emanate from the orb of day. In his early ministry, when first appearing as a public teacher where he had been brought up, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and the book of the prophet Esaias being delivered to him, he read therefrom ; " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind ; to set at liberty them that are bruised ; to preach the ac- ceptable year of the Lord." No wonder that, as he closed the book, and gave it again to the minis- ter, and sat down, " the eyes of all them that were * Proverbs viii. 31. 138 THIS GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. in the synagogue were fastened on him." How gracious had been his words ! How benignant his looks ! How vast the contrast between the quiet laborer in the workshop, and the glowing teacher in the church of Nazareth ! As the incarnate God went out from Jericho, blind Bartimeus sat by the way-side begging, and cried, " Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me." The multitude sternly rebuked what they deemed the obtrusive importunity. An earthly prince might have passed on in careless or disdain- ful silence. But the Son of Mary was the personi- fication of that mercy w^hich " dwelleth between the cherubims." Never did a whisper of sincere prayer escape the ear of Him "who hears the young ravens when they cry." He stood still; he commanded that the sightless beggar should be called. Thus summoned, the humble suppliant re- newed his importunate petition, " Lord, that I might receive my sight !" " And Jesus said unto him, go thy way ; thy faith hath made thee whole." And the blind, restored to the light of heaven, joy- ously followed in his Saviour's train. Jesus was sent "to heal the broken-hearted." As he was sitting a bidden guest at the table of the pharisee, a woman of the city, who was a sinner. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 139 " brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with ointment." The pharisee cavilled in his heart that he, who assumed to be a prophet, should have permitted himself to be thus contaminated by the touch of pollution. But Jesus had come " to seek and to save that which was lost." Perceiving the secret thoughts of his host, he recounted the pathetic tokens of the woman's contrition, and then said to him in the presence of those who sat at meat, " Wherefore I say unto thee that her sins, which are many, are forgiven ; for she loved much." And instead of reminding the guilt-stained and spirit-broken penitent of her past offences, he dis- missed her by kindly saying, " Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace." How exhaustless is the foun- tain of redeeming love ! How exquisitely touching this heaven-drawn portraiture of pardoning grace ! The Gospel was wont to elucidate and impress its doctrines and precepts by images borrowed from nature and from life. It thus brought home its great truths to " the business and bosoms" of men, with a familiarity and power to which classic learning was a stranger. Almost at the head of 140 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. this species of sacred teachings stands the wonder- ful parable of the prodigal son. The seemingly- hopeless reprobate shadowed forth the gentile sin- ner ; Jesus himself was the impersonation of the forgiving father. Overwhelmed by complicated miseries, and pressed by the iron hand of famine, the long lost son at length came to himself, and penitently sought the place of an hired servant in his native halls. The keen eye of ineffable affec- tion recognized him " a great way off," disguised as he was by tattered rags and the deep impress of sin, want and shame ; the yearning parent " had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him." The fattened calf was killed ; the best robe was brought forth ; shoes were put upon his naked feet ; the ring of love was placed upon his emaciated finger ; and the home of his boyhood was made to welcome his return with gladsome sounds of music and festivity. Such is the never-failing mercy of the redeeming God ! Such his patient waiting for the prodigal's return! Such his "joy over one sinner that repenteth." Jesus " went about doing good." Lazarus was dead ; he and his pious sisters had been beloved by the incarnate Deity. The great Physician drew near to the house of mourning ; the bereaved or- THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 141 phans came out to meet him, attended by their sympathizing friends. The faithful Mary fell down at his feet ; her companions joined in the general wail; the compassionate God "groaned in spirit and was troubled." He was conducted to the homely grave ; the putrescent body had been four days dead. " Jesus wept." Even the Jews ex- claimed, " Behold how he loved him." He lifted up his mandatory voice, so bland, yet so potent ; death released its grasp ; decay bloomed into health ; Lazarus came forth; and for his loosened grave- clothes were substituted the folding arms of sisterly affection. Such was the graciousness of the Word made flesh ! Yet was the resuscitation at the cave of Bethany but a faint emblem of the blood-bought renovation of a world " dead in trespasses and sins." Jesus approached Jerusalem to suffer and to die. Yet the anticipated pangs of Gethsemane and of Calvary were absorbed for awhile in his piteous moans over the city of his executioners. When as he descended from the mount of Olives, he came in full view of the metropolis so soon to be bathed in his blood, he wept over it as he had wept over the body of Lazarus, " Saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which 142 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. belong unto thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes." And in another of the evangehsts he exclaimed ; " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!" Nor did the immediate pains of crucifixion chill the warm fountain of his compassion. He infused a foretaste of heaven into the heart of the penitent thief at his side; amidst his own agonies he failed not to remember his houseless mother ; and with his dying breath he invoked forgiveness upon those who had nailed him to the tree. CHAPTER VII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. "Wisdom of Jesus Christ — His sermon on the mount — Other cases of his tinearthly wisdom — He was the patron and personification of holy friendship — His parting interview with his disciples, — His simpUcity — His manner of teaching — His indifference to human fame — Silence of Gospel concerning his personal appearance. The wisdom of the Son of God claimed brother- hood with his beneficence. We here refer, not so much to the divine wisdom displayed in the con- ception of the atonement, as to those hourly demon- strations of supernatural intelligence which marked the whole terrestrial pilgrimage of the God wrapped in the mantle of humanity. Jesus Christ was with- out human instruction, and so were his biographers ; they were the unlettered natives of a land deemed unlettered by the pride of classic antiquity. They could not, if they would, have fabricated the dis- plays of godlike knowledge constantly exhibited by Him who spoke as mortal never spoke. " How knoweth this man letters, having never learned ?" was the irrepressible exclamation of the listening 144 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. and astonished Jews. The interrogatory has been reiterated by every student of the Gospel for eigh- teen centuries. The intelUgence of Mary's son, if not divine, was miraculous. It was not the en- dowment of uninspired humanity. Contemplate the sermon of Christ upon the mount. Had the Bramins of India, the Chinese Confucius, the Persian Zoroaster, and all the learned sages of Greece, been convened in solemn conclave to digest a code of ethics and of theism, their united labors could not have approached nearer than earth approaches heaven to that com- pendium of the wise, the profound, the sublime, delivered by Jesus the carpenter, and recorded by Matthew the publican. What simpleness, what perspicuity of diction! What depth, what gran- deur of thought ! What comprehensiveness of doctrine! What pureness of morals! What de- velopments of the human heart ! What unfoldings of Jehovah's character ! The place was suited to the august occasion. No earthly synagogue would have held the thronging multitudes. It was a lofty and spacious temple, " not made with hands," hav- ing for its base the mountain-top, and for its roof the skies that the divine Speaker chose as the the- atre for his grand display of that Wisdom which, THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 145 " when he prepared the heavens," " was by him as one brought up with him."* It was no mortal sage who tested in the balances of the sanctuary the widow's mite, and pro- nounced it heavier than all the oblations of the rich. That wisdom was not of this world, which, drawing aside the curtain of eternity, propounded to thoughtless mortals the tremendous interroga- tory, " What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?" When vain curiosity had inquired of him, " Lord, are there few that be saved ?" the sagacity was more than human which dictated the silencing response, " Strive to enter in at the strait gate : for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in and shall not be able." It was not within the scope of human rhetoric to have portrayed, as He of Nazareth por- trayed, the spiritual pride of the pharisee and the broken-hearted humility of the publican, when they " went up into the temple to pray." The delinea- tion of personified benevolence in the parable of the good Samaritan, bears decisive marks of that inimitable pencil which painted '•' the green of the earth and the blue of the heavens." * Proverbs viii. 21, 80. 7 146 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. The Jewish hierarchy pressed onward, and in- structed by demoniac cunning, often sought to en- trap our Saviour in his speech. With this view they brought to him a woman taken in adultery ; and after reminding him of the Mosaic ordinance, which required that such should be stoned, they temptingly asked him, " But what sayest thou ?" — thinking either to bring him into collision with the ancient laws of the nation, or else to expose the friend of sinners to the imputation of unfeeling severity. He, perceiving their guile, "stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not." But as they con- tinued to press the inquiry, " he Hfted himself up and said unto them, he that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And again he stooped down and wrote on the ground." They felt the rebuke of the Omniscient ; and one by one they all went out, leaving " the woman standing in the midst." Resuming his erect position, he said to her, " Woman, where are those thine accusers ? hath no man condemned thee ? She said. No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her. Neither do I con- demn thee; go and sin no more."* With what * John viii. 3-11. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 147 simplicity does this scene illustrate the wisdom, as well as the mercy of the God made flesh ! Not seldom did Jesus by counter interrogatories overwhelm his treacherous foes. The chief priests insidiously asked him, "By what authority doest thou these things ? and who gave thee this author- ity ?" To avoid the alternative of silence or co- erced exposition, he preliminarily demanded of them whether the baptism of John was from heaven or of men. The leaders of the sanhedrim were confounded by the question, which they could not parry, and dared not explicitly answer; and thus was he relieved from the obligation of re- sponding to theirs. By means not wholly dissim- ilar, he eluded the snare adroitly prepared for him in the matter of paying tribute to Caesar. The great prophet of Nazareth was familiar with all the mysteries of our spiritual nature. To the young man in the Gospel who thought himself the personification of goodness, Jesus propounded, as the ordeal of his professed piety, the startling in- junction, " Go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come take up thy cross and follow me." A test, so true, yet so utterly repugnant to unregenerate humanity, adventurers, seeking to 148 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. gain proselytes to an imposture, would never have ventured to prescribe. Nothing but that wisdom which is from above would have uttered or con- ceived the astounding truth, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." And yet even reason itself, when taught by the Bible, must perceive that the change of heart, essential to qualify the idolater of wealth for communion with the pure spirits of heaven, is a greater prodigy than the passage of a camel through a needle's eye. The physical miracle might be achieved by the simple mandate of the Almighty ; the accomplish- ment of the moral miracle required as its prelimi- nary the incarnation and death of the Son of God. Repugnance to believe revealed truths has been a distinguishing characteristic of our race ever since the fall. Man sleeps for ages in heathen ig- norance, or Mohammedan delusion, with little of skeptical misgiving to disturb his lethargic repose. But wherever the light of Inspiration seeks to es- tablish its supremacy, the alarmed prince of dark- ness arouses himself, and insidiously sows the tares of cavil and of doubt; and these noxious weeds spring up in the rank soil of the carnal mind with fearful luxuriance. The weakness of fallen human- THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 149 ity, and the vigilance and power of the arch enemy- were well known to the omniscient Redeemer, who compassionated the doubting Thomas, and conde- scended to confirm his faith by the exhibition of his own pierced hands and wounded side. To the petition that the sainted beggar might be sent from the bosom of Abraham to the five brethren of the lost epicure, to warn them of their impending fate, Jesus made the father of the faithful thus respond ; " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." This response, though veritable as heaven, would not have been conceived by human wisdom. Where, in all the volumes of uninspired genius, can be found sketching so graphic, so sublime, so aw- fully grand and appalling, as that displayed by the Galilean mechanic in the parable of the rich man " clothed in purple and fine linen," and the beggar "laid at his gate full of sores !" Infidelity has vauntingly objected, that in the code of the virgin's Son, friendship is a stranger. Even the eloquent and admired Soame Jenyns af- firms that friendships " in their utmost purity de- serve no recommendation from this religion." What, then, shall be said of the friendship of Jesus for the family of Lazarus ? What of his affection 150 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. for the beloved disciple w^ho leaned on his bosom ? What of the predilections of the primitive apostles for those in w^hom they found a holy congeniality of temper and of taste ? The Gospel soil is not un- propitious to the growth of any generous affection. " We ought to lay down our hves for the brethren," was the glowing declaration of the disciple whose heart overflowed with all the tenderest sensibilities of friendship. Jesus himself "is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother."* What but friend- ship for the friendless prompted him, when he was rich, for our sakes to become poor ? " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Yet was this acme of finite affec- tion expanded into infinity when the Son of God laid down his life for his enemies ! The drama of redeeming love rose in interest as it approached its close. One of its most moving scenes was the interview between Jesus and his disciples just before his mournful visit to the garden. He fed them with the symbols of his own body and blood ; the Lord and Master washed his servants' feet. As soon as the traitor had left the sacred presence, there was laid open to the faithful eleven * Proverbs xviii. 24. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 151 the very soul of the incarnate Deity. No longer regarding them as servants, he styled them his friends; he bequeathed to them the enjoyment of the richest jewel in his treasury, even his own price- less peace. Announcing his departure from the world, he cheered them with the assurance that he went to prepare for them mansions in his Father's house. He promised the Comforter, who should abide with them forever. The pressing remem- brance of his own approaching pangs was absorbed for a time in the kindly charities of parting friend- ship. Thrice did he reiterate to the mourning orphans his dying mandate, that they should love one another. The interview he closed by fervent prayer, invoking blessings on those so soon to be bereaved, and on the faithful to the end of time. Such was the friendship of the friend of sinners ! Where can such a parting interview be found in the annals of earthly affection ? A striking feature in the character of Christ was his matchless simplicity. His manners were sim- ple ; his style was guileless of art ; he arrayed the profoundest thoughts in the plainest garb. His parables, so familiar, so unadorned, so sublimely concise and pathetic, make their way directly to the inmost recesses of the understanding, and to 152 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. the very core of the heart. What was the oratory of Demosthenes or of TuUy compared to the sim- ple, the soul-touching eloquence of Mary's Son? He delighted in the companionship of little chil- dren. When his disciples rebuked them, he ex- claimed, "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'* Wherein did little children resemble the pure spirits of paradise ? Surely not in holi- ness, born, as they were, in sin. The resemblance must have consisted in their artless simplicity. It was their simplicity, then, that endeared them to the gracious Saviour. Simplicity is an attribute of heaven ; and the Son of God was its personifica- tion on earth. At the creation he stamped sim- plicity on all his material works. The planets roll onward in simple majesty ; and the flowers of the field rear their little heads in simple loveliness. Simplicity marks every page of the volume of na- ture ; it marks, too, every page of the Volume of Grace. Their resemblance in simpleness manifests that both volumes are the offspring of one common Parent. The great Teacher had a manner of imparting instruction, which impostors would not and could not have fabricated. Well might the astonished THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 153 people declare that " he taught them as one having authority." "Never man spake like this man," was the official report of the messengers of the chief priests and pharisees sent to arrest him. There is a wide difference between the confidence of truth and the effrontery of imposture. It was the majesty of conscious truth, bodied forth in look and voice, which carried home his glowing words to the inmost recesses of every soul. Honesty yielded them its implicit credence ; incorrigible prejudice gnashed on them with its teeth; none heard them with callous indifference. He taught not by elaborated discussions ; his effusions, extem- poraneous and sententious, seem generally to have been prompted by surrounding scenes or passing events. His doctrines and precepts he deigned not to sustain by concatenations of argument ; he deemed his own fiat their sufficient authentication. He sent forth his unpremeditated thoughts, as he sends forth the lightning of the skies, to illuminate and to strike by their own inherent potency. A master in either of the schools of learned Athens, would have been deemed insane had he practised the mode of teaching affirmed of the prophet of Nazareth. Nor would the fabricators of a religious romance have ventured to forge such 154 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. method for its hero. It would fail in naturalness, unless we assume that the incarnation was a re- ality. It is only through the sublime truth that the great Teacher in the Gospel was the second person of the Trinity, that we can divest his mode of teaching of its seeming incongruities. With the eye of faith steadfastly bent upon the incarnation, we may indeed perceive that although Jesus Christ spake as never man spake, yet that he nevertheless taught and commanded just as it became a Deity clothed in manhood, to teach and to command. It was to be expected that the eternal Word made flesh would address his creatures, as he had ad- dressed them at Sinai, in terms brief, sententious, imperative ; resting for authority, not on elaborate ratiocination, but upon his own ineffable majesty. The teaching of Jesus was in strict concord with the attributes of his complex being. It was a fit- ting part of one harmonious whole. To believe that stupendous whole the creation of unlettered peasants, would require a stronger faith than to be- lieve it a revelation from God. Fictitious writings live upon the breath of popu- lar applause. It is the element of their vitality; and if it is withdrawn, they die and become the food of worms. Imaginative authors, whether in i* THE CHAKACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 155 prose or verse, accommodate their fictions to the principles and passions of our common nature. Universal applause is the idol of their worship. The conquest of a world is as dear to them as it ever was to a martial hero. They follow public taste as the needle turns to the pole. Their plot with its episodes, their machinery, their artifices of arrangement and ornaments of diction, are all for effect. Even the epic muse bends her majestic form to the prejudices of ages and of climes. Her varied lore and her magic spells are all combined to win for herself an immortality of fame. No imaginative writer can ever aspire to renown with- out copious oblations upon the altars of the gods of this world. Of fame the " meek and lowly" Jesus was not a follower ; at the shrine of that goddess he offered no incense ; he stooped to none of fiction's arts to beguile attention and seduce belief. Instead of conciliating the pride of the heart, he declared it the sink of sin ; instead of expatiating upon the dignity of human nature, he pronounced it so fallen, corrupt, and degraded as to require for its cleansing the tears of repentance and the blood of God. The flight of time never beheld a produc- tion so utterly opposed to every passion and preju- 156 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. dice of humanity as was the Gospel of the crucified Redeemer. Nothing but the power of truth could have achieved its glorious triumphs. There are omissions in the evangelical accounts of Jesus Christ which would not have befallen works of romance. Fiction is wont to depict the features and mien of its hero. Reserve upon these attractive themes would essentially impair its chance for popular favor. Of the personal appear- ance of the Son of God the Gospel is silent. For eighteen centuries his outward man has been a sub- ject of almost painful inquisitiveness. What would not pious wealth have given for a statue or a painting of the Saviour of the world, wrought from scriptural materials by the hand of a master ! The Gospel affords no such materials. It contains ex- haustless food for the immortal mind ; not a tittle of aliment for idle curiosity. Even upon its heaven and its hell, it maintains a sublime reserve. It powerfully, yet dimly, shadows them forth to the awe-stricken imagination, without detailing the en- joyments of the blest, or the secrets of the great prison-house of despair. This is a peculiarity which distinguishes the religion of the cross from all impostures. CHAPTER VIII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Trial of Jesus Christ — His grandeur and humility — Incidents of his trial — Conduct of Judas — No other traitor ever induced by compunctious visitings to commit suicide — His remorse and self murder were dying confessions of the innocency and godhead of his Master — FaU and penitence of Peter — Conduct of Pontius Pilate — The crucifixion of Jesus Christ — He spoke seven times from the cross — And as man never spoke — Bad men could not have forged the character of Jesus Christ if they would — And good men would not have forged it if they could — Extract from The trial of the Son of God detailed in the Sa- cred Record, constitutes one of the most stupendous scenes in the drama of salvation. Such a scene could not have been delineated by the unaided ef- forts of the fishermen of Galilee. How artless is the evangelical representation, surpassing in sim- plicity childhood's most guileless tale ! Yet how sublimely magnificent the conception bodied forth ! The Majesty of the heaven of heavens, clothed in manhood, stands a submissive captive at the bar of an earthly tribunal ! How could the human mind of itself have imagined the words and acts befitting a Being so humbled, so transcendently august? 158 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Yet reason itself, enlightened by the Gospel, per- ceives, and is obliged to admit that the words and acts ascribed to the incarnate Deity were in exact accordance with the complex character he had condescended to assume. The grandeur and meekness of the Prisoner of Pilate were mingled in ineffable harmony. He mi- raculously prostrated to the ground those who came to seize him. He restored the severed ear of the servant of the high priest. He announced himself to be the King of the Jews, the predicted Messiah, the Son of God, the Judge of earth. Yet was he " brought as a lamb to the slaughter." Though he wielded the thunders of omnipotence, he permitted his oppressors to spit on him in the face ; they buf- feted him ; they smote him with the palms of their hands ; they scourged him ; they gave him to drink vinegar mingled with gall; they contemptuously clothed him in a purple robe, and placed on his head a crown of thorns, and bowed the knee before him in mock adoration. It was not in humanity, with the utmost fortitude pertaining to its sphere, to have borne with un- repining patience the mockings, the scourgings, the spittings, endured by the incarnate God. The delineation of his trial, if regarded as the imperso- THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 159 nation of simple mortality, would seem strange and unnatural. Indwelling divinity is indispensable to its verisimilitude. Regarded as the impersonation of God manifested in the flesh that he might atone for the sins of the world by unearthly humiliation and sufl:erings, it assumes intrinsic marks of al- mighty truth. Thus viewed, the representation of the doings and sayings, and speaking silence of the Arraigned before Pilate, makes its resistless way to the understanding, the conscience and the heart. The events of his trial seem but the natural consequences of his incarnation. It was not to be expected that the humbled God would have humbled himself after the manner of men. When he became lowly, it was but godlike that his lowliness should, in its in- finitude, have resembled the infinitude of his glory. The trial and condemnation of Jesus Christ ex- hibit subordinate characters and incidents illustra- tive of his divinity. The treason of Judas consisted, not in acts of direct violence, but in his information to the chief priests of the time when his Master would be found in a solitary place, so that they might arrest him without danger of popular commotion. Upon learning that he was condemned, and about to be executed, the remorseful culprit went again to the 160 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. chief priests, confessed to them that he had " be- trayed the innocent blood," and when they heeded him not, cast down at their feet the thirty pieces of silver, with which they had bribed him, and de- parted and hanged himself The catastrophe of his unfaithfulness presents an anomaly in the his- tory of treason. Traitors have existed in every age ; but none save the betrayer of Emmanuel was ever driven by compunctious visitings to lay suici- dal hands upon himself His despair and self-mur- der were not induced by the bare consciousness that he had betrayed innocent blood. Treason has often caused the death of innocency, and yet slept in callous indifference. Iscariot was urged to his fate by the maddening thought that he had be- trayed not only the blood of man, but the blood of God. The betrayer of Jesus could not have been mis- taken in the character and lineage of the Betrayed. He had spent years in his immediate family ; he had been the ear- witness of his doctrines and pre- cepts, the eye-witness of his wonderful works ; he had himself wrought miracles in his authoritative name. If he had only freed the world of an im- postor, he might have gloried in his act. But he well knew, and despairingly proclaimed, that he THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 161 had sold the Lord of glory. The cast out devils confessed that Jesus was the Son of God. The apostate Judas reiterated the momentous confes- sion ; and his murderous hands sealed it with his ow^n blood. Declarations solemnly made in the immediate presence of the king of terrors, without compulsion or persuasion, at the sacrifice of character and of property, stand second in convincing power to no testimony of earthly origin. The dying declaration of Iscariot w^as unsolicited and voluntary ; it drew after it the surrender of his thirty pieces of silver ; it superadded to the abhorrence of the faithful, the contempt of the Jews. It could not have been prompted by any expectation of arresting the sac- rilegious machinery he had set in motion, or of rendering more tolerable his condition in the com- ing world. It was a sublime and awful demonstra- tion of the intrinsic potency of truth, bursting forth by its own volcanic force from the despairing heart. We doubt whether the last declaration of the reprobate Judas is less decisive in its confirm- atory bearing on the christian evidences, than the dying declaration of the martyred Stephen, when he said, " Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." 162 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Infidelity can find no escape in the subterfuge, that the sacred writers may have forged the over- powering story of the betrayer of his Master. Matthew affirms that, when the conscience-smitten traitor had confessed the innocence of his victim, and cast down in the temple the thirty pieces of silver, the chief priests took up the money, and, declaring that it was not lawful to put into the treasury the price of blood, bought with the silver pieces the potter's field to bury strangers, and that the field was still called the field of blood when the evangelist wrote. The evangelist thus subjected the verity of his narrative to the test of public monuments and his- tory. Whether, just after the crucifixion, a ceme- tery had been purchased in the environs of the Hebrew metropolis for the interment of strangers ; whether that cemetery had originally assumed and ever maintained the name of " the field of blood," and whether its distinctive and strongly-marked appellation had been derived from the treason of Judas Iscariot; were points upon which the twi- light of peradventure rested not at the date of Matthew's publication. The truth or falsity of the alleged facts must have been known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem, when within less than a THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 163 quarter of a century after their supposed occur- rence, the first of the Gospels made its appearance in that city. Many members of the sanhedrim, before which our Lord was arraigned, were doubt- less then living; and its deceased members were unquestionably represented by numerous descend- ants ready to sustain the character of their ances- tors. Vindictive hosts of Jewish and pagan oppo- nents, bent on exterminating the new and hated faith, would eagerly invoke from the repositories of truth or calumny, and triumphantly proclaim to a deriding world, any fact or rumor tending to im- peach the fidelity of the leading evangelist. Even Celsus, the heathen philosopher, who wrote elabo- rately against Christianity in the second century, admits, as we have already seen in a previous chapter, the truthfulness of the story of Judas, and urges, as an argument against our holy religion, that its Founder, claiming to be omniscient, per- mitted himself to be betrayed by one of his chosen twelve. Peter's fall and repentance are incidents of the trial of Jesus Christ strongly corroborative of the inspiration of the Gospel. The apostolic lapse, following so closely the most vehement assevera- tions of enduring constancy, would not have been 164 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. likely to be introduced by unbelieving impostors into a work of fiction. It must have startled by its unnaturalness, were it not for the scriptural revelations of the deceitfulness of the heart, and the tremendous power of the prince of darkness. The unchristianized imagination would be still less apt to have devised the contrition of the apostle. Evangehcal experience is a department of knowl- edge, in the exploration of which unaided reason could make little progress. True repentance can be portrayed only by him who has felt it. Homer could have composed the fifty-first Psalm no more than he could have searched with omniscient ken the secrets of stranger hearts. None, unless him- self a penitent, could vie with the son of Jesse in the delineation of penitence. The simple, the graphic, the soul-touching words, "And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter" — " And Peter went out and wept bitterly," flowed not from the pen of a conscious and callous deceiver. 1" In the trial of our Lord, the conduct and decla- . rations of the Roman governor form memorable ^ incidents. He was not ignorant that the prisoner claimed to be the Christ, the King of the Jews, the Son of God. Yet at the close of the trial, Pilate pronounced him a "just person," and sought to THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 165 cleanse himself, by the ablution of his hands, from the stain of innocent blood. He would not have bestowed on the prisoner that honorable and high appellation, had he thought him an errant and blas- pheming impostor, deluding earth and affronting heaven by false pretensions to divine titles and at- tributes. Pilate must, therefore, have held that the victim of Jewish malignancy was above the grade of mortality. On no other supposition could he have pronounced him a "just person. "J The trial is replete with other circumstances corroborative of the belief of Pilate, that the ac- cused was of celestial birth. It was this belief, and not any sentiment of compassion, that induced the hesitancy and vacillation of the profligate and iron-hearted judge. Pity never touched the un- feeling soul of Pilate. But even he stood appalled at the thought of condemning to crucifixion an in- carnate Deity. Hence his reiterated appeals to the populace, pressing the innocency of Jesus, and urging them to ask his release. Hence his appli- cations to the prisoner himself, to explain who and whence he was. Hence his effort to cast upon Herod the responsibility of an acquittal or condem- nation. When the Jews recalled his attention to the avowal of Jesus that he was the Son of God, 166 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Pilate became "the more afraid." The dream of his wife confirmed his apprehensions : and it was not until hundreds of infuriated voices had threat- ened the vengeance of Csesar, in case he should dare to liberate a rival claimant to sovereignty, that he finally delivered the accused to his fate. His consciousness of official delinquencies rendered him peculiarly fearful of the scrutiny of his imperial master. The belief entertained by the Roman judge that his prisoner was of heavenly origin, rested on rea- sons of pressing cogency. Pilate had for many years been procurator of Judea. He was familiar with the accounts of the wonderful works predicated of Jesus of Nazareth. He had ample means of ascertaining whether the alleged miracles were real or simulated, and could not have been mistaken in their character. If they were real, they demon- strated the divine powers of him who wrought them. If they "were simulated, they proved him a public cheat. Upon the supposition of their falsity, Pilate would not have declared to the Jewish mul- titude, "I am innocent of the blood of this just person ; see ye to it." Nor can we suppose that the responsive imprecation, " His blood be on us and on our children," would have entailed the curse THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 167 of heaven upon the whole Hebrew race for more than eighteen centuries, had the central cross of Calvary been crimsoned from the veins of a mere impostor. The mien of the accused must have in- spired the Roman procurator with awe. His very look had made its way to the heart of the denying apostle. His whole demeanor was unearthly; his meekness, his patience, his silence when speaking might have saved his life, pertained not to the sphere of humanity. He acted, he spoke, he looked the God; eclipsed indeed, but not wholly concealed by the covering of flesh. Unbelief has never, to our knowledge, attempted to impeach the evangelical accounts of the conduct and declarations of the Roman governor at the trial of Jesus Christ. At least three of the Gospels were published before the generation to which Pi- late belonged had passed away. At the times of their publication, many were, doubtless, alive who had been personally present at the trial, and were hostile to the new religion. Unfaithfulness in the history of public proceedings, of such recent date and absorbing interest, would have been closely followed by exposure and indignant reprobation. Candor is a twin sister of truth. The unaffected and inimitable candor displayed by the evangelists 168 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. in the relation of their Master's trial are strong con- firmations of its verity. The outrages, v^hich caused the quaking of the firm-seated earth, and the obscuration of the luminary of day, they recounted in language simple, ingenuous and unimpassioned. No vestige of prejudice or partiality is to be found in these narratives. The disciples of Jesus recip- rocated naught of the rancor of the chief priests and elders. They stated the actings and doings of the time-serving Pilate w^ithout the slighest inter- mixture of vituperative comment. They left the traitor Judas to the scorpion stings of his own con- science, and, sparing of human maledictions, con- signed him to the retributions of eternity. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the last scene of his humiliation. It appears from the Sacred Record, that he spoke seven times after being nailed to the cross. He declared to the penitent thief, "Verily I say unto thee, to-day thou shalt be with me in paradise." He said to the weeping Mary and to the beloved disciple respectively, " Woman behold thy son ;" Son, " Behold thy mother." The following ejaculations also burst from his agonized lips : " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do;" "I thirst;" "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me;" "Father into thy hands I ^ THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 169 commend my spirit ;" " It is finished." The order of his expiring declarations is not distinctly stated in the inspired pages. If these were, indeed, the last words of Jesus Christ, they prove beyond per- adventure that he was not an impostor. No im- postor ever spoke and died as he is represented to have spoken and died. Well might the centurion who " stood over against him and saw that he so cried out and gave up the ghost," exclaim, " Truly this man was the Son of God."* Infidelity can elude the demonstration imparted by the scene of the cross only by the bold affirma- tion that it was a sheer fabrication. But how could profligate counterfeiters have conceived such a scene ? Its elements were not derived from the previous realities of human life. Until the death of Christ no martyr ever prayed for his murderers. That was a prodigy to which the Gospel gave birth. The pathetic exclamation, " My God, my, God why hast thou forsaken me?" referred not to the de- livery of his person into the hands of his enemies ; for he had declared upon his arrest, that he could pray to his Father, who would presently send him more than twelve legions of angels. It was his * Mark xv. 8 170 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. spirit that was forsaken of his God. The wailing sent forth from the cross was induced, not by the scoffings or scourgings or spittings, nor yet by the lacerating irons. It was spiritual bereavement and dismay that overwhelmed the Sufferer. If the writers of the Gospel were its fabricators, they must have been the vilest of men. But how could such men have conceived the fact that a holy being lives upon the light of God's countenance, and is cast into the depths of despair if that light is withdrawn ? Such fact, though true as heaven, is beyond the sphere of mortal imagination. Had the high-reaching Plato, instead of his perfect common- wealth, attempted to portray a perfect hero of theological romance, he might have conducted him through all the trials to which flesh is heir, and finally crowned him with the martyrdom of the cross ; but even his sublime fancy could not have thrown into the fable the unearthly thought that the loss of the light of God's countenance is the acme of suffering. Such a thought pertains not to uninspired and unregenerate humanity. The car- nal heart knows nothing — dreams nothing — of the ineffable light of the divine countenance, and con- sequently nothing of the unutterable anguish caused by its loss. THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 171 The terms " It is finished," pronounced by the Sufferer on Calvary, embodied thoughts which the uninspired mind could not have grasped. They reached and pervaded infinitude. It was the Infi- nite who uttered them. They were the last words of the tragedy of redemption. What was "fin- ished ?" The extermination of the empire of dark- ness was " finished." The temple of salvation for perishing mortals was " finished." The most glori- ous structure ever reared by omnipotent power was "finished." The throes and agonies of the Son of God were " finished." We have thus in the present chapter and the two which immediately precede it, sought to show that the character of the Christ of the Gospel could not have been conceived and delineated by any un- aided effort of the human mind. The proofs of the position seem to be irresistible. Should, however, any timid inquirer after truth incline to believe that it is too broadly stated, it might be narrowed down, without impairing its force, to the affirmation that had men could not have conceived and deline- ated the character. Thus modified, the position cannot but command the acquiescence of the most hesitating inquirer, unless he unfortunately fails in the article of candor. In the character of Jesus TTTsrTVP"Rc;TT 172 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. Christ godliness is the chief element. The signifi- cation of godliness has been familiar to the christian of every age and clime. It is written on the tablet of his heart. But bad men are as ignorant of godli- ness as a blind man is of colors. It is not palpable to carnal vision — it is spiritually discerned. A bad man could conceive and depict the life of godliness in all its varied yet harmonious hues, including its outward demonstrations and inward exercises, no tnore than a man blind from his birth could con- ceive and depict the lights and shades of the ever- changing, ever-glorious landscape. Had bad men, without the lamp of Revelation, formed a god for themselves, the idol of their crea- tion would have resembled but dimly the august Ancient of Days. And had they, by the mere light of nature, attempted to form a saviour of the world, their fabricated redeemer would have borne a still less similitude to our Lord Jesus Christ. A mes- siah of profane fiction would have approximated scarcely in semblance the " Holy Thing" born of the virgin. It would not, like Him, have endured with meekness and patient magnanimity the sweat of labor and the sweat of blood. The offspring of human passion, pride, and mahgnancy must have betrayed some marks of its earthly parentage in the '^# THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 173 palace of the high priest, at the judgment-seat of Pilate, or in the hall of Herod, with body scourged, and face spit upon, and head lacerated with the crown of thorns. It could not by mortal arts have been made to suffer and to die as the Son of God suffered and died. We are, then, to conclude that bad men could not have conceived and delineated the character of Jesus Christ. And the conclusion is equally irre- sistible that good men would not have banded to- gether to concoct and disseminate a wicked and impious imposture. That good men forged the story of redeeming love is, indeed, a supposition that infidelity has never had the hardihood to advo- cate. It may thus be recognized as an everlasting truth, that good men would not have fabricated, if they could, the character of our blessed Saviour, and that bad men could not have done it if they would. We close our remarks upon the character, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus Christ, by subjoining a memorable passage from the writings of the unbe- lieving and profligate Rousseau. In the bosom of the Genevan philosopher was deeply implanted a sensibility to the charms of truth, which neither the blighting frosts of skepticism, nor the poisonous 174 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. influences of a dissolute life, could utterly extin- guish. It burst forth from its smouldering ruins in the following sublime eulogy of the Gospel and its divine Pounder : — "I will confess to you," says the infidel associate of Hume, " that the majesty of the scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction; how mean, how con- temptible are they, compared with the scriptures! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man ? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affect- ing gracefulness in his delivery ! What sublimity in his maxims ! What profound wisdom in his discourses ! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his rephes ! How great the command over his passions I Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so Uve, and so die, without weakness and without ostentation ? When Plato describes his imaginary good man, loaded with all the punishments of guilt, yet meriting the highest re- wards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ : the resemblance was so striking, that all the fathers perceived it. What prepossession, what blindness must it be, to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary 1 What an infinite disproportion there is between them! THE CHARACTER OF JESUS CHRIST. 175 Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last ; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a mere sophist. He invented, it is said, the theoiy of morals. Others, however, had before put them in practice ; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just, before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life for his country, before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety ; before he had even de- fined \irtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn among his cotemporaries, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both pre- cept and example ? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for ; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agoni- zing pains, abused, insulted and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates in re- ceiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the weeping exe- cutioner who administered it ; but Jesus in the midst of excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the hfe and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelical history a mere fiction ? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction : on the con- 176 THE GOSPEL ITS OWN ADVOCATE. trary, tlie history of Socrates, wliich nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obvi- ating it ; it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were inca- pable of the diction, and strangers to the morality con- tained in the gospel; the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more astonishing character than the hero." CHAPTER IX. THE MIRACLES OF THE GOSPEL. Miracles of Christianity internal proofs of divinity — Science of jurid- ical evidence applied to christian history — Writers of Gospel not deceived — Miracles palpable to senses — Abiding in effects — Infallible — No collusion — Open and public — C