ground that no claim was set up in regard to the resurrection of Jesus, or on the ground that the claim thus set up was false. Assuredly the people of the Roman empire, when they embraced Christianity, did it in the belief that its Author had been raised from the dead, and the belief of this was vital to the reception and extension of the system. The religion could not have been propagated had it not been for this belief, and it is equally clear that the account of this could not have been inserted in the narrative respecting the founder of the system afterward; that is, if it should be supposed that the religion had been propagated without this belief, it would have been impossible to make this an article of faith afterward. How could it be inserted in the original records ? How could men be made to believe that a doctrine never adverted to in the

propagation of a system had been, in fact, the main thing in commending it to the world ? f) Once more: These points are not affected materially by the questions whether miracles were wrought, or whether Jesus was actually raised from the dead. The point which I am making is, that the religion was propagated on the belief of those things, not on the ground of their truth. How far the fact that the world believed in the reality of the miracles, and that great multitudes of all classes abandoned their ancient systems of religion, and embraced Christianity as true, on that belief, proves that the miracles were real, is another point which it is proper to argue with an infidel in its proper place. But that is not the point now before us.

(3.) In looking at the question how far the evidence of ancient facts is affected by time, I adverted, under the general inquiry, to these circumstances—when the witnesses are competent, and have a proper opportunity of observing the facts; when there is no motive for deception or imposture; when the facts narrated are against the religious faith of the narrator; when the facts referred to furnish the most easy and natural explanation of existing things; and when these facts are commemorated and perpetuated by monuments, coins, medals, games, festivals, processions, and celebrations; that is, when they go into the very structure of society, and when it is no more easy to detach them from existing things than it was to detach the name of Phidias from the statue of Minerva without destroying the image. You can not explain the history of the world without the supposition that Cæsar was put to death by the hand of assassins.

It remains only to apply this principle, in few words, to Christianity.

Suppose, then, it were not true that Cæsar was put to deatin; suppose that the facts which I have adverted to in regard to Christianity, in its history, are false; what follows ? What is to be done then? What is the proper work of the man who does not believe this?

On the principles now laid down, we have the same confirmation of the main facts of the history of Christianity which we have of the death of Cæsar, the life of Alfred, and the conquest of England by William the Norman, though on a wider scale, and affecting more deeply the course of history and the condition of the world; for, in the existing state of things on the earth, for one such thing that goes to establish those secular facts, and to make the supposition of their reality indispensable to the explanation of existing things, there are ten, at least, that go to confirm the truth of the main facts of the New Testament. IIard is the task of the skeptic who denies the rcality of the death of Cæsar

in the senate-house, or of the existence of Alfred, or of the conquest of William the. Norman; harder by far the task of the skeptic who denies the realities of the life and death of Jesus. For, in this case, he must suppose that all history, secular and sacred, has been corrupted and is unreliable; he must suppose that Christianity sprang up without any adequate cause, and at a time unknown; he must suppose that it made its way in the world on what was known to be falsehood; he must suppose that men every where embraced the system manifestly against their own interests, and with nothing to satisfy them of its truth; he must leave unexplained the conduct of thousands of martyrs, many of them of no mean name in philosophy and in social rank; he must explain how it was that acute and subtle enemies, like Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian, did not make short work of the argument by denying the truth of the main facts of the Christian history; he must explain the origin of the numerous monuments in the world which have been reared on the supposition of the truth of the great facts of Christian history—the ancient temples whose ruins are scattered every where, the tombs and inscriptions in the Catacombs at Rome, the sculptures and paintings which have called forth the highest efforts of genius in the early and the medieval ages, and the books that have been written on the supposition that the religion had the origin ascribed to it in the New Testament; he must explain the observance of the first day of the week in so many lands, and for so many ages, in commemoration of the belief that Christ rose from the dead; he must explain the observance of the day which is supposed to commemorate the birth of the Redeemer, as one would have to explain the observance of the birthday of Washington, on the supposition that Washington was a “myth,” and the observance of the fourth day of July on the supposition that what has been regarded as a history of the American Revolution was a romance; he must explain the ordinance kept up in memory of his death for nearly two thousand years on the supposition that the death of Christ never occurred on the cross at all; he must explain the honor and the homage done to the cross every where—as a standard in war, as a symbol of faith, as a charm or an amulet, as an ornament worn by beauty and piety, as reared on high to mark the place where God is worshiped, as an emblem of self-sacrifice, of love, of unsullied purity-the cross in itself more ignominious than the guillotine or the gibbet-for why should men do such things with a gibbet if all is imaginary? —and he must explain all those coins, and medals, and memorials which crowd palaces, and cabinets, and churches, and private dwellings, and which are found beneath decayed and ruined cities, on the supposition that all these are based on falsehood, and that in all history there has been nothing to correspond to them or to suggest them. Can the fossil remains of the Old World, the ferns in coal-beds, and the forms of fishes imbedded in the rocks, and the bones of mammoths, and the skeletons of the Ichthyosaurian and Plesiosaurian races, be explained on the supposition that such vegetables, and such land and marine monsters never lived ? Will the geologist who happens to be an infidel in religion allow us to urge this in regard to those apparent records of the former history of the world? Will he then demand that all in history, in monuments, medals, tombs, inscriptions, customs, laws, sacred festivals, religious rites, that seem to be founded on the truth of the great facts of Christianity, shall be explained on the supposition that no such facts ever occurred ? that all this is myth, and fable, and delusion?

Hard would be the task of the infidel if he were to undertake this. It was too much for Mr. Gibbon, and he therefore set himself to the work of showing how, on the admission of these main facts, the propagation of the religion could be explained on the supposition that it had not a divine origin; it was too much for Strauss, and he therefore set himself to the task of showing how, on the supposition that Jesus lived, the system of Christianity could be made to grow around a few central truths, representing in imagined action the ideas of deceivers and impostors; it was too much for Renan, who, admitting the main facts in the New Testament, and attributing to the founder of the system unequaled genius, and a power of which he became slowly conscious, accompanied with much self-delusion, attempted to show how he originated a system designed to overturn all existing systems, and a system that did accomplish it. Each and all of these things go to confirm the position which I have endeavored to establish in this Lecture, that time does not materially affect the evidence of the great facts of history; that what was properly believed at the time when the events occurred may be properly believed now; that if the historic records were lost, we could reproduce many of the leading events of the history of the world. In particular, if the New Testament were destroyed, we could reproduce, from other sources, the main facts pertaining to the life and death of the Founder of Christianity, on which the religion was propagated and received, and the great features of the system as it was first propounded to the world. How far the principles laid down in this Lecture bear

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