Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

nations, till a feeling be aroused which shall demand the emancipation of Poland's injured children, and teach not alone the Oppressor of the North, but all earth's despots, that humanity shall not be trampled to the dust for ever.

THE CHRISTIAN PIONEER.

GLASGOW, MARCH 1, 1833.

THE seventh Annual Examination of the children in the Sunday-school connected with the Unitarian Chapel, Stockton-uponTees, took place on Sunday, December 30, before the Rev. W. Duffield of Thorne, and the Congregation, and friends of the school. The children read and repeated various pieces prepared for the occasion, and answered with great propriety the questions put to them as to the meaning of what they had read. Specimens of their writing were also exhibited; and all present expressed themselves highly gratified with the whole proceedings.

On Monday the 31st, the children of the Sunday-school met in the Freemasons' Lodge, where tea had been prepared for them. Hymns were sung and addresses made, and all seemed happy. At six o'clock the same evening, about one hundred members of the Congregation assembled to tea, being admitted at sixpence each. The Rev. W. Duffield was called to the chair, and a highly interesting evening was passed in listening to addresses from the chairman, Rev. G. Heaviside of Rochdale, and Messrs. Bald, Richmond, Brown, Clephan, F. C. Richmond, Randyll, jun. Fallowes, Jackson, &c. Such meetings are indeed well calculated to produce Christian fellowship in all, where they are adopted. This is the fourth annual tea-party held at Stockton; the charge has never exceeded sixpence each person; that has been found sufficient to defray every expense; and it is much to be desired, that similar parties were more general in the Unitarian denomination, rather than dinner-parties, which necessarily exclude many individuals from participating in a rational and heartfelt enjoy

ment.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

OUR friends in various parts of England, are respectfully informed, that their communications for this Magazine, if sent to the care of MR. HUNTER,-ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, LONDON, previously to the last day of every Month, will reach the Editor in a few days afterwards.

[blocks in formation]

I PROCEED now to consider the direct and positive proofs of Christianity, beginning with some remarks on the nature and sufficiency of the evidence on which it chiefly relies.

Christianity sprung up about eighteen hundred years ago. Of course its evidences are to be sought in history. We must go back to the time of its birth, and understand the condition in which it found the world, as well as the circumstances of its origin, progress, and establishment; and happily on these points, we have all the light necessary to a just judgment. We must not imagine that a religion which bears the date of so distant an age, must therefore be involved in obscurity. We know enough of the earliest times of Christianity to place the question of its truth within our reach. The past may be known as truly as the present, and I deem this principle so important in the present discussion, that I ask your attention to it.

The past, I have said, may be known; nor is this all, we derive from it our most important knowledge. Former times are our chief instructors. Our political as well as religious institutions, our laws, customs, modes of thinking, arts of life, have come down from earlier ages, and most of them are unintelligible without a light borrowed from history.

Not only are we able to know the nearest of past ages, or those which touch on our own times, but those which are remote. No educated man doubts any more of the victories of Alexander or Cæsar before Christ, than of Napoleon's conquests in our own day. So open is our communication with some ages of antiquity, so many are the records which they have transmitted, that we know them even better than nearer times; and a religion which grew up eighteen hundred years ago, may be more intelligible, and accompanied with more decisive proofs of truth or falsehood, than one which is not separated from us by a fourth part of that duration.

From the nature of things, we may and must know

[ocr errors]

much of the past, for the present has grown out of the past, is its legacy, fruit, representative, and is deeply impressed with it. Events do not expire at the moment of their occurrence. Nothing takes place without leaving traces behind it; and these are in many cases so distinct and various, as to leave not a doubt of their cause. We all understand how in the material world events testify of themselves to future ages. Should we visit an unknown region, and behold masses of lava covered with soil of different degrees of thickness, and surrounding a blackened crater, we should have as firm a persuasion of the occurrence of remote and successive volcanic eruptions, as if we had lived through the ages in which they took place. The chasms of the earth would report how terribly it had been shaken, and the awful might of long extinguished fires, would be written in desolations which ages had failed to efface. Now conquest and civil and religious revolutions leave equally their impressions on society, leave institutions, manners, and a variety of monuments which are inexplicable without them, and which taken together, admit not a doubt of their occurrence. The past stretches into the future, the present is crowded with it, and can be interpreted only by the light of history.

But besides these effects and remains of earlier times, we have other and more distinct memorials of the past, which, when joined with the former, place it clearly within our knowledge. I refer to books. A book is more than a monument of a preceding age. It is a voice coming to us over the interval of centuries. Language, when written, as truly conveys to us another's mind as when spoken. It is a species of personal intercourse. By it the wise of former times give us their minds, as really as if by some miracle they were to rise from the dead and communicate with us by speech.

From these remarks we learn, that Christianity is not placed beyond the reach of our investigations by the remoteness of its origin, and they are particularly applicable to the age in which the gospel was first given to the world. Our religion did not spring up before the date of authentic history. Its birth is not hidden in the obscurity of early and fabulous times. We have abundant means of access to its earliest stages; and what is very important, the deep and peculiar interest which Christianity has awakened, has fixed the earnest attention of the most learned and

sagacious men on the period of its original publication, so that no age of antiquity is so thoroughly understood. Christianity sprung up at a time when the literature and philosophy of Greece were spread far and wide, and had given a great impulse to the human mind; and when Rome, by unexampled conquests, had become a centre and bond of union to the civilized world, and to many half-civilized regions, and had established a degree of communication between distant countries before unknown. We are not then left to grope our way by an unsteady light. Our means of information are various and great. We have incontestible facts in relation to the origin of our religion, from which its truth may be easily deduced. A few of these facts which form the first steps of our reasoning on this subject, I will now lay before you.

1. First, then, we know with certainty the time when Christianity was founded. As to this fact, there is and can be no doubt. Heathen and Christian historians speak on this point with one voice. Christianity was first preached in the age of Tiberius. Not a trace of it exists before that period, and afterwards the marks and proofs of its existence are so obvious and acknowledged as to need no mention. Here is one important fact placed beyond doubt.

So

2. In the next place, we know the place where Christianity sprung up. No one can dispute the country of its birth. Its Jewish origin is not only testified by all history, but is stamped on its front, and woven into its frame. The language in which it is conveyed, carries us at once to Judea. Its name is derived from Jewish prophecy. None but Jews could have written the New Testament. natural, undesigned, and perpetual are the references and allusions of the writers to the opinions and manners of that people, so accustomed are they to borrow from the same source the metaphors, similitudes, types, by which they illustrate their doctrines, that Christianity as to its outward form may be said to be steeped in Judaism. We have then another established fact. We know where it was born.

3. Again, we know the individual by whom Christianity was founded. We know its Author, and from the nature of the case this fact cannot but be known. The founder of a religion is naturally and necessarily the object of general inquiry. Wherever the new faith is carried, the first and most eager questions are, "From whom does it come? On whose authority does it rest?" Curiosity is

never more intense than in regard to the individual who claims a divine commission, and sends forth a new religion. He is the last man to be overlooked or mistaken. In the case of Christianity especially, its founder may be said to have been forced on men's notice, for his history forms an essential part of his religion. Christianity is not an abstract doctrine, which keeps its author out of sight. He is its

very soul. It rests on him, and finds its best illustration in his life. The simple consideration that Christianity must have had an author; and that it has been always ascribed to Jesus, and to no one else, places the great fact which I would establish beyond doubt.

4. I next observe, that we not only know the founder of Christianity, but the ministers by whom he published and spread it through the world. A new religion must

have propagators, first teachers; and with these it must become intimately associated. A community can no more be ignorant as to the teachers who converted it to a new faith, than as to the conqueror who subjected it to a new government; and where the art of writing is known and used for recording events, the latter fact will not more certainly be transmitted to posterity than the former. We have the testimony of all ages, that the men called Apostles were the first propagators of Christianity, nor have any others been named as sustaining this office; and it is impossible, that, on such a point, such testimony should be false.

5. Again, we know not only when, and where, and by whom Christianity was introduced-we know, from a great variety of sources, what, in the main, this religion was, as it came from the hands of its founder. To assure ourselves on this point, we need not recur to any sacred books. From the age following that of Christ and the Apostles, down to the present day, we have a series and an almost numberless host of writers on the subject of Christianity; and whilst we discover in them a great diversity of opinions and opposite interpretations of some of Christ's teachings, yet, on the whole, they so far agree in the great facts of his history, and in certain great principles of his religion, that we cannot mistake as to the general character of the system which he taught. There is not a shadow of reason for the opinion, that the original system which Jesus taught was lost, and a new one substituted and fastened on the world in his name. The

« ForrigeFortsæt »