recognised his person than he suddenly disappeared. Their tale was hardly finished when Jesus in person salutes the company. From this time ten of the eleven apostles are loud in the assertion of his recovery from the grave; and, a week after, the eleventh is cured of his affected incredulity, and joins in the report of his associates. The apostles, either separately or in company, converse with him repeatedly. He tells them that all power is given him in heaven and in earth; he formally invests them with a commission to preach the Gospel to the whole world, and to form a universal church, open to all nations; at last, he leads them out to Bethany, and there, in the act of bestowing on them a solemn benediction, he was raised from the earth and carried to heaven in their sight. Of the four writers who have transmitted this story, two, Matthew and John, were apostles. The other two, Mark and Luke, by the consent of all antiquity, wrote under the inspection of apostles, Mark under the direction of St. Peter, Luke of St. Paul. The credit, therefore, of the apostles is pledged for the particulars of the narrative; and whether we consider the story in itself, or the writers of the story, it is evident, that if it was at all a fiction the apostles had a principal share in the fabrication of it. But since the apostles had no motive to fabricate the lie, or to persevere in the propagation of it, since the force of temptation drew the other way, that is, to induce them to deny the fact, or desist at least from the avowal of it; that is, since their very veracity in this particular instance at least is unquestionable, it follows, that if their report was a fiction, it was not of their invention; and yet it has been shown, that in the invention they must have had a principal part. A fiction not coined by

them, and of which they were still the coiners, is surely the fiction of a fiction, the dream of a distempered brain. So that if any human testimony ever attained the certainty of demonstration, it is in this instance of our Lord's resurrection; which is established with far greater certainty by the evidence of the apostles than any other fact in the whole compass of history, sacred or profane. Thus complete and perfect is the testimony of the twelve apostles to the matter in question. But a greater testimony is yet behind.

Let it be supposed that the apostles, to avoid the infamy of having been themselves deceived, might conspire to propagate the delusion, and either fabricated the story of our Lord's resurrection with all its circumstances, or entered into the views of some new deceiver who had the resolution to personate Jesus after his crucifixion. Whence, then, was it that this deceit obtained the testimony of the Holy Spirit ? The concurrent testimony of the apostles themselves and the Holy Spirit form the evidence of our Lord's resurrection." He shall testify of me," said our Lord before he suffered, "and ye also shall bear witness." That notable miracles were done by the apostles in the name of the Lord Jesus was so manifest to all them that dwelt in Jerusalem, that the bitterest enemies of their doctrine could not deny it; nor was it ever denied by the infidels of antiquity. On the contrary, their attempt to account for it by the power of magic is a confession of the fact; and while the fact is confessed, the conclusion from the fact is obvious and inevitable. To refer the miracles, which were wrought in confirmation of a doctrine which went to the extirpation of every corruption in morals and in worship, and to the establishment of a practical reli

gion of good works springing from an active faith, to the spirit of delusion, is a subterfuge for infidelity which that spirit only could suggest.

I have now, briefly indeed, and in a summary way, but more particularly than I thought to do, laid before you the irrefragable and permanent nature of the testimony by which the fact of our Lord's resurrection is supported. It is my intention to discuss a certain objection to this evidence, as the evidence is stated in my text, which must be allowed to be very plausible in the first appearance of it. I mean to show, that it is the necessary consequence of certain circumstances, which indispensably require that the evidence of the resurrection should be just what it is; insomuch that the proof would be rather weakened than improved by any attempt to complete it in the part in which it is supposed to be deficient. But this I shall reserve for future discourses. Meanwhile you will remember, that the entire evidence of our Lord's resurrection consists of two parts,-the testimony of the apostles, and the testimony of the Spirit. The testimony of the apostles is the most complete that human testimony every was; the testimony of the Spirit is unexceptionable. The fact, therefore, is established. So certain as it is that Christ died, so certain it is that he is risen. He died for our sins, he is risen for our justification. And remember, that the only purpose for which Christ died and rose again was, that we, enlightened by his doctrine, edified by his example, encouraged with the certain hope of mercy, animated by the prospect of eternal glory, "may rise from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness."

SERMON II.

ACTS, x. 40, 41.

Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God.

THE return of the season devoted by the church to the solemn commemoration of our Lord's glorious resurrection seemed to admonish us, that we should direct our attention to the evidence by which the merciful providence of God was pleased to confirm so extraordinary a fact. The entire evidence consists of two branches: it is in part human, and in part divine. The attestation of the apostles to the fact makes the human part of the evidence; the testimony of the Spirit in the miraculous powers exercised by the apostles was divine. The human part is what is chiefly to be examined; for the credibility of that being once established, the force of the testimony of the Spirit is obvious and irresistible: for, provided the fact be once established, that such miracles were performed by the apostles, these miracles were manifestly the "witness of God" which he bore to his own Son. The historical evidence of the fact lies in the testimony of the apostles themselves, and in the concession of their adversaries. The human testi

mony, therefore, the testimony of the apostles, is to us, who were not eye-witnesses of the miracles which they performed, the groundwork of the whole

evidence.

In my last discourse I explained to you, in a summary way, that the credibility of this testimony arises from the number, the information, and the veracity of the witnesses. Their number, more than is required by any law to establish a fact in a court of justice; their information infallible, if an infallible knowledge of their Master's person was the result of an attendance upon him for three years; their veracity, by the circumstances in which they were placed, is rendered unquestionable: so that, in this singular instance, if in any, the evidence of testimony emulates the certainty of mathematical demonstration. I showed you, that the testimony of the apostles to the fact of our Lord's resurrection is not more extraordinary in the degree than in the permanency of the credibility which belongs to it. It is not only so constituted that it must have been satisfactory and irrefragable at the time when it was delivered, but so immutable are the principles on which the credit of it stands, that by no length of time can it suffer diminution. What it was to the contemporaries of the apostles, the same it is to us now in the end of the eighteenth century; and so long as the historical books of the New Testament shall be extant in the world, (and to suppose that a time shall come when they shall be no longer extant, were, I think, to mistrust our Master's gracious promise,) so long as these books then shall be extant, so long the testimony of the apostles shall preserve its original credibility.