from his own experience. True communion with the Christian church is the same in all ages. Whoever embraces the Gospel with any hope of profiting by its profession, must live in all essentials as these first converts lived, and become what they were. If the reader of these pages is so living, he will probably acknowledge that he was only induced to enter on such a course of life by a most decided conviction of its necessity, and of the danger of living otherwise. If he has neither the faith nor the habits of these primitive converts, he is equally well able to judge of the resistance opposed by human nature to a change like that which has been described. He can answer, whether a slight argument, or any except the most irresistible testimony, can induce him to confess the Christian's faith, or conform to the strictness of scriptural Christianity. And why should he assume that men were different seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, and ready to do that on insufficient evidence, which no evidence can persuade him to attempt? What can we argue from with more certainty, than the acknowledged and visible character of human nature?

It would be good, if all those who may demur with regard to the difficulty of changing the moral habits of a community, or of forming a sect which should walk "by faith and not by sight," and prefer things eternal to things temporal, would try the experiment, and see how much it costs to convert a single

individual. There are few who have not among their acquaintance some who are living in habits inconsistent with the Gospel, and which must exclude them, if persevered in, from the hopes of the Gospel. Let them try to reclaim these acquaintances, by setting before them the threatenings and the promises of God, the offer of mercy brought by his Son Jesus, and all those truths which had such powerful effects in Greece and Asia. We would not say that they may not prevail: it is an attempt which is constantly making, and not unfrequently successful ; but this we may safely affirm, that those who try it, will not pretend that they have had an easy conquest; and that those who are persuaded, will allow that no trifling victory has been gained over them. And this in a country where Christianity is supported by all the external advantages which long establishment, national profession, zealous and learned ministers, and multitudes of sincere believers can supply.

And if such are the difficulties in the midst of such advantages-for the strength of which I appeal to every man's own heart-what prospect of success would Paul have had, humanly speaking, in Corinth, or Ephesus, or Rome, or any heathen city? From Judea his country, hardly known-if known, proverbially despised; denouncing idols in the centre of idolatry; proscribing the pleasures of this world in the midst of wealth, and vanity, and luxury;

preaching the care of the soul to those who denied its immortality; inculcating the fear of God to those who were ignorant of his existence; or, if they acknowledged a Supreme Being, denied his moral government. When would he have made a single convert, if he had stood on no firmer basis than his own opinion, or his own assertion?

Yet it was under these most unfavourable circumstances that a body of men sprung up, and increased, and diffused themselves, professing such original and austere doctrines; it was in the midst of luxury, and thoughtlessness, and ignorance, and idolatry, and depravity, that a system of pure, and self-denying, and enlightened, and vigilant piety was planted, and rooted, and flourished, and brought forth abundant fruit, and, spreading far and wide, received under its shelter a continually increasing multitude. "A pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol. Still farther, after a revolution of thirteen or fourteen centuries, that religion is still professed by the nations of Europe; the most distinguished portion of human kind, in arts and learning as well as in arms."1 Either this religion was the invention of some obscure indivi'duals in that very country of the world which any

1 Gibbon.

one would select as the least likely of all countries to convert the rest, and was set up by means, the inefficacy of which it is not possible to exaggerate; or it was truly a REVELATION, and prevailed by the force of truth, illustrated by divine power. Surely those must be strangely blind to the light of moral evidence; must have a very partial acquaintance with the human heart, with the strength of established habits, particularly of practical habits of vice; who can attribute the actual effects of the Gospel in overcoming them, and introducing the most contrary habits, to anything except the overpowering and indisputable proofs of a divine commission, which the Apostles carried with them. We find men, who had been brought up in total ignorance of any future state, despising earthly things, and setting their affections on things above. We find men, who had hitherto acknowledged deities of human origin and human passions, obeying an invisible Creator of infinite holiness and purity. We find men, in short, cultivating and rearing a moral and religious character, which but a few years before had absolutely no pattern in existence; which they could not have imagined, because it was beyond the range of their conceptions; which they could not have imitated, because it was nowhere to be seen.1

1 The circumstances of the early Christians are well described by Dr. Hey, Lecture i.xviii. "We should go to a meeting of the first Christians:

So that this dilemma lies before us: either the first followers of Christianity were men of totally different feelings and dispositions from any men whom we have ever known, and especially from ourselves, whom we know best; or they had irresistible evidence of the truth of those facts which form the basis of the religion. For that the Gospel, with the hopes and fears which it sets before us, and still more with the assistance it bestows, is able to effect this change, and create the character under consideration, is matter of undoubted experience. But those on whom it first produced this effect must have possessed undeniable evidence of its truth. It must have

plain, simple, and incommodious; concealed, in some degree,under alarm from danger of persecution: one such meeting we should find at least in every century, till the end of the seventh; we should hear the heathen conversing about the Christians in private life, and deliberating about them in councils of state; we should attend the tribunal of heathen magistrates, and hear the early Christians accused, defended, condemned: listen to the topics made use of in accusing and defending: we should attend the convicts to the stake, or the cross; see their mild fortitude, their heroic benevolence: or, first, we should attend them to prison, and see their fellow Christians crowding about them, giving up every sort of convenience, in order to afford them relief and support in their confinement. We should enter into the domestic retirements of those families who were wholly converted, and see their amiable virtues, or their animated piety: or of those which were become Christians in part, and see the conflicts between religious and filial duty; between Christian devotion and fraternal affection. We should see the zealous labours of the clergy; their minds inflamed with the greatness, the novelty, the danger of their situation: free from worldly views of gain, or rank, or power, wholly fixed upon heaven, and the means of attaining it; instructing, persuading, exhorting, convincing."