If we turn our attention now from the circumstances that prepared the way for Christianity, to the instrumentalities by which it was founded and promulgated, we shall find further indications of providential arrangement.

In the Author of the new religion, we behold a character essentially different from any type of greatness which the world had hitherto recognized, or shown any capability to create. It was not such a character as human wisdom would have chosen to propagate a new faith, and vanquish the strong powers of custom, prejudice, and passion. There was no affinity between it and the master desires of man's heart, or the predominant ambitions of the age. There was nothing in Jesus of Nazareth to conciliate the favor of the world, except, indeed, through its repentance and spiritual renovation; for between them. was the strongest moral antagonism, as the persecutions and martyrdoms of the primitive Church abundantly witness. The traditionary expectation of the Messiah does not correspond with the actual character of Christ. He was to come in the splendor of royalty, and in the strength of political conquest. With the sceptre of David, he was to break the chain of the Roman, and punish the insolence

or by any conceivable course of moral improvement, have produced Christianity. The conception of the human character of Jesus, and the simple principles of the new religion, as they were in direct opposition to the predominant opinions and temper of his own countrymen, so they stand completely alone in the history of our race; and, as imaginary no less than as real, altogether transcend the powers of man's moral conception. Supposing the gospels purely fictitious, or that, like the Cyropædia' of Xenophon, they embody on a groundwork of fact the highest moral and religious notions to which man had attained, and show the utmost ideal perfection of the divine and human nature, they can be accounted for, according to my judgement, on none of the ordinary principles of human nature. When we behold Christ standing in the midst of the wreck of old religious institutions, and building, or, rather, at one word commanding to arise, the simple and harmonious structure of the new faith, which seems equally adapted for all ages,a temple to which nations in the highest degree of civilization may bring their offerings of pure hearts, virtuous dispositions, universal charity, our natural emotion is the recognition of the divine goodness, in the promulgation of this benificent code of religion, and adoration of that Being in whom that divine goodness is thus embodied and made comprehensible to the faculties of man."

See, also, his examination of the work of Dr. Strauss, in the appendix to chap. ii. History of Christianity. A more thorough refutation of Strauss is furnished in Neander's history.

of the Gentile. In his person, the glory of the Hebrew theocracy was to revive, and in his reign, the supremacy of Judaism be vindicated before the subjugated world The actual life and career of Christ exhibit at once the most unequivocal hostility to the temper of his time, and the most palpable disregard of popular expectations. No voluntary speculator in the world's credulity, no merely human adventurer on the highway of ambition, would have shown such temerity. The fact is an indication that the divine spirit was shed upon him without measure, and that the divine wisdom determined his course.

In the humble station to which our Lord confined himself, and in the obscurity of his associates and co-laborers, we now perceive a fitness and a wisdom above the discretion of man. The reformer who came from Nazareth and sought companions from Galilean peasants, might spread his doctrines with an impunity denied to a Pharisee, moving in a more conspicuous walk of life. The contempt of the religious aristocracy became his temporary security; and after him, it shielded his disciples, until the doctrines they taught had become rooted in the human heart. This has been God's uniform method, as we see in the history of subsequent reforms. He selects his ministers from humble men, whose sole recommendations are the grace he imparts to them and the blessings that spring from their labors; and they diffuse their unquenchable spirit among men, and secure their victory over the world, before their social superiors condescend to recognize their existence. Moreover, had the first appearance of the new faith been more imposing, had its Founder been associated with the dominant class, and his disciples chosen from the learned and the powerful, its whole destiny must have been changed, and its great design subverted. Christianity must then have become merely the religion of a caste, more restrictive even than Judaism, and could not, in the nature of things, have won the sympathies, and enlisted the devotion, of the despised multitude. Those lessons of self-renunciation, of enduring humility, of patient suffering, of unostentatious courage, and of faith victorious over all the ills of time, that now appeal so successfully to the common heart of man, and live in the literature of Christendom, perennially fresh and

fair, must have been forever wanting; a treasure, the worth of which we cannot presume to estimate. A religion that hopes to embrace all classes and minister to the most abject moral destitution, must begin with the lowest stratum of society, infusing its spirit and grounding its ideas in unsophisticated hearts, where the primal rectitude of our nature has not been corrupted by the sophistries of policy, or paralyzed by the enchantments of ambition; but where the soul is free to obey its intuitions, and has not the god of this world to dethrone before it can serve the God of heaven. A great truth, planted at the base of society, will work its way to the summit, permeating the whole mass with its essence, but believe there is no instance in history where the reverse of this method has occurred.

In addition to the foregoing considerations, it is worthy of remark that the humble rank of the Author and early apostles of Christianity, made it impossible that their success could be attributed to their personal qualities, or to the influence that naturally belonged to their station. Independently of what we term their miraculous works, there was a power in their ministry not the result of their natural endowments, but communiated by God, in an extraordinary manner, and for a special purpose. The spontaneous conviction of those who watched their course with an unprejudiced eye, was, that God must be with them, in a peculiar sense, giving efficacy to their efforts. by His own resistless sanction. It was the exhibition of a divine energy in those men, (otherwise so feeble in their own persons and so contemptible in public estimation,) that compelled the reluctant world to acknowledge their authority. It was easier to believe them the divinelyendowed ministers of Heaven, than to believe that results so astonishing could be wrought by their unassisted efforts.8

But let us turn from the persons by whom Christianity was first taught, to the vehicle by which its wonderful manifestations were conveyed to the knowledge of subse

8 In the popular essay, entitled "Reason and Faith," by Henry Rogers, there is an impressive statement of the paradoxes one is compelled to believe, who rejects the divine authority of the early Christian teachers.

quent generations. When we examine those books in which are recorded the words and deeds of the first Christian teachers, we find them enriched by the most varied contents. Besides doctrinal statements addressed to the reason, moral suggestions that appeal to the conscience, and benignant assurances that kindle the affections, there are certain exhibitions of mingled power and love, termed miraculous, that properly entrench themselves in the imagination. It is the habit of many thinkers at the present day, to reject these supernatural exhibitions— these "revelations of the Deity addressed to the senses of man"—as being contrary to their experience, and, therefore, unworthy of their belief. Now, without entering into any formal defence of miracles, we simply suggest the fact, that this supernatural element in the gospel histories, however repugnant to our "fastidious intelligence,' is that which influenced, more than any thing else perhaps, the more imaginative mind of Christendom, during seventeen centuries. In view of this consideration, the miraculous part of these narratives must be viewed as a prearrangement of Divine Wisdom for a temporary condition of the world.

The importance of the fact here introduced, will justify some elaboration :- "It was by this very supernatural agency, if I may so speak," says Milman," that the doctrines, the sentiments, the moral and religious influence of Christianity, were implanted in the mind on the first promulgation of the gospel; and the reverential feeling thus excited, most powerfully contributed to maintain the efficacy of the religion. That which is now to many incredible, not merely commanded the belief, but made the purely moral and spiritual part of Christianity credible. These passages, in general, are not the vital and essential truths of Christianity, but the vehicle by which those truths were communicated; a kind of language by which opinions were conveyed, and sentiments infused, and the general belief in Christianity implanted, confirmed, and strengthened. As we cannot but suppose that the state of the world, as well during, as subsequent to, the introduction of Christianity—the comparative re-barbarization of the human race-the long centuries in which mankind was governed by imagination rather than by severe rea

son—were within the design, or, at least, the foreknowledge, of all-seeing Providence; so, from the fact that this mode of communication with mankind was, for so long a period, so effective, we may not unreasonably infer its original adoption by Divine Wisdom. This language of poetic incident, and, if I may so speak, of imagery, interwoven as it was with the popular belief, infused into the hymns, the services, the ceremonial of the Church; embodied in material representation by painting or sculpture -was the vernacular tongue of Christianity, universally intelligible, and responded to by the human heart, throughout these many centuries. Revelation thus spoke the language, not merely of its own, but of succeeding times; because its design was the perpetuation, as well as the first propagation, of the Christian religion..... Poetrymeaning by poetry such an imaginative form, and not merely the form, but the subject-matter, of the narrative, as, for instance, in the first chapters of St. Matthew and St. Luke-was the appropriate, and perhaps necessary, intelligible dialect, the vehicle for the more important truths of the gospel to later generations. The incidents, therefore, were so ordered, that they should thus live in the thoughts of men; the revelation itself was so adjusted and arranged, in order that it might insure its continued existence throughout this period. Could, it may be inquired, a purely rational or metaphysical creed have survived, for any length of time, during such stages of human civilization?" 9

Endorsing these views, we also add, that, as the supernatural element in the gospel records rendered such essential service to the European nations, during the long epochs of comparative barbarism, there must be equal necessity that it should minister to like conditions of humanity, in the future extension of the Christian kingdom. Equally potent in their influence upon rude or poetical minds, must be those miraculous exhibitions, wherever the gospel is preached throughout all coming time. Logical minds, submitting to the cold sway of reason, may affect to dispense with such an agency; but to the masses of mankind, in whom the imagination is the more active

9 No. iii. Appendix to Chap. ii. Hist. Christianity.