him; that I shall repent those bitter, cruel words till my last day; that I would have given my life gladly to have saved his-I that so scorned and wounded him. But he will never know it now-never! never!"

With her hand in mine I sat and watched beside her, till the silver moonlight gave place to the dim gray of early dawn; and she slept. But the reaction of long-repressed excitement, and the violent agitation of the previous night, were too much for her fragile frame, and the next few days she was unable to leave her room. I think our kind old doctor more than suspected the cause of her illness; he had been our friend ever since he came to Paris, Uncle Lucien's before; and Léon was his special favourite.

In one of the quiet evenings which mamma spent with her, Nina told her too the story of her sorrow. I was glad of this; mamma had so much better a way of comforting than I had. And never again did the ice close round Nina's heart. After those few first days, indeed, we seldom spoke of her special share in our common grief. But words were not needed. Heart answered to heart. I knew in the quiet twilight hours, when she and I sat alone and in silence, what thoughts were filling the fair head that rested on my knee-the light touch of the little hand that sought mine with such a clinging, confiding clasp, told me more than many words; and she knew this.

V.

N the last tract we ascertained that the Gospels and Epistles were not forgeries of some nameless monks of the third century -that the shopkeepers, silversmiths, tentmakers, coppersmiths, tanners, physicians, senators, town councillors, officers of customs, city treasurers, and nobles of Cæsar's household, in Rome, Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Athens, and Alexandria, could no more be imposed upon in the matter of documents, attested by the well-known signatures of their beloved ministers, than you could by letters or sermons purporting to come from your own pastor-and that the documents which they believed to contain the directory of their lives, and the charter of that salvation which they valued more than their lives which they read in their churches, recited at their tables, quoted in their writings, appealed to in their controversies, translated into miany languages, and dispersed into every part of the known world, they neither would nor could corrupt or falsify.

The genuineness of the copies of the New Testament which we now possess is abundantly proved by the comparison of over two thousand manuscripts, from all parts of the world; scrutinized during a period of nearly a hundred years, by the most critical scholars, so accurately that the variations of such things as would in English correspond to the crossing of a t, or the

dotting of an i, have been carefully enumerated; yet the result of the whole of this searching scrutiny has been merely the suggestion of thirteen, or, as later critics say, nine unimportant alterations in the received text, of the seven thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine verses of the new Testament. This is a fact utterly unexampled in the history of manuscripts. There are but six manuscripts of the Comedies of Terence, and these have not been copied once for every thousand times the New Testament has been transcribed, yet there are thirty thousand variations found in these six manuscripts, or an average of five thousand for each, and many of them seriously affect the sense. The average number of variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament examined, is not quite thirty for each, including all the trivialities already noticed.

We are, then, by the special providence of God, now as undoubtedly in possession of genuine copies of the Gospels and Epistles, written by the companions of Jesus, as we are of genuine copies of the Constitution of the United States, and of the Declaration of Independence. These are historic documents, of well established genuineness and antiquity, which we now proceed to examine as to their truthfulness.

There is no history so trustworthy as that prepared by contemporary writers, especially by those who have themselves been actively engaged in the events which

they relate. Such history never loses its interest, nor does the lapse of ages, in the least degree, impair its credibility. While the documents can be preserved, Xenophon's Retreat of the Ten Thousand, Cæsar's Gallic War, and the Despatches of the Duke of Wellington, will be as trustworthy as on the day they were written. Yet some suspicion may arise in our minds, that these commanders and historians might keep back some important events which would have dimmed their reputation with posterity, or have coloured those they have related so as to add to their fame. Of the great facts related in memoirs addressed to their companions in arms, able at a glance to detect a falsehood, we never entertain the least suspicion.

There is, however, another kind of contemporary history not so connected and regular as the formal diary or journal, which does not even propose to relate history at all, but is for that very reason entirely removed from the suspicion of giving a colouring to it; which, at the cost of a little patience and industry, gives us the most convincing confirmations of the truth, or exposures of the mistakes of historians, by the undesigned and incidental way in which the use of a name, a date, a proverb, a jest, an expletive, a quotation, an allusion, flashes conviction upon the reader's mind. I mean contemporary correspondence. If we have the private letters of celebrated men laid before us, we are enabled to look right into then, and see their true characters. Thus Macaulay exhibits to the world the proud, lying, stupid tyrant James, displayed in his own letters. Thus Voltaire records himself an adulterer, and begs his friend D'Alembert to lie for him; his friend replies that he has done so. Thus the correspondence of the great American herald of the Age of Reason exhibits him drinking a quart of brandy daily at his friend's expense, and refusing to pay his bill for boarding. In the unguarded freedom of confidential correspondence, the veil is taken from the heart. We see men as they are. The true man stands out in his native dignity, and the gilding is rubbed off the hypocrite. Give the world their letters, and let the grave silence the plaudits and the clamours which deafened the generation among whom they lived, and no man will hesitate whether or not to pronounce Hume a sensualist, or Washington the noblest work of God-an honest man.

If we add another test of truthfulness, by increasing the number of the witnesses, comparing a number of letters referring to the same events, written by persons of various degrees of education, and of different occupations and ranks of life, resident in different countries, acting independently of each other, and find them all agree in their allusions to, or direct mention of, some central facts concerning which they are all interested, no one can rightfully doubt that this undesigned agreement declares the truth. But if, in addition to all these undesigned coincidences, we happen upon the correspondence of persons whose interests and passions were diametrically opposed to those of our correspondents,

and find that, when they have occasion to refer to them, they also confirm the great facts already ascertained, then our belief becomes conviction which cannot be overturned by any sophistry, that these things did occur. If Whig and Tory agree in relating the facts of James's flight and William's accession, if the letters of his Jacobite friends and those of the French ambassador confirm the statements of the English historian, and if we are put in possession of the letters which James himself wrote from France and Ireland to his friends in England, does any man in his common sense doubt that the Revolution of 1688 did actually occur?

When, in addition to all this concentration and convergence of documentary testimony, one finds that the matters related, being of public concern, and the changes effected for the public weal, the people of Great Britain have ever since observed, and do to this day celebrate, by religious worship and public rejoicings, the anniversaries of the principal events of that Revolution, and that he himself has been present, and has heard the thanksgivings, and witnessed the rejoicings on those anniversaries, the facts of the history come out from the domains of learned curiosity, and take their stand on the market-place of the busy world's engagements. We become at once conscious that this is a practical question-a great fact which concerns us—that the whole of the law and government of a vast empire has felt its impress-that our ancestors and ourselves have been moulded under its influence, and that the Protestant religion of Europe and America, under whose guardianship we have grown to a prominent place among the people of earth, and may arrive at a better prominence among the nations of the saved, has been preserved, under God, by that Revolution. We could scarcely know whether most to pity or contemn the man who should labour to persuade us that such a Revolution had never occurred, or that the facts had been essentially misrepresented.

Now it is precisely on the same kind of evidence as that which we have for these indisputable facts of the English Revolution, that we believe the great facts of the Christian Revolution. We have contemporary histories, formal and informal; letters, public and private, from the principal agents in it, and opposers of it, dispersed from Babylon to Rome, and addressed to Greeks, Romans, Jews, and Asiatics; written by physicians, fishermen, proconsuls, emperors, and apostles. And these great facts stand out more prominently on the theatre of the world's business as effecting changes on our laws and lives, and their introduction as authenticated by public commemorations, more solemn and more numerous than those resulting from the English or the American Revolution. Our main difficulty lies in selecting, from the vast mass of materials, a portion sufficiently distinct and manageable to be handled in a tract of this size.

We shall be guided by the motto already announced as the rule of inductive research. One thing at a time; and the nearest first. The Epistles being nearer our

own times than the Gospels, claim our first notice; and first among these, those which stand latest on the page of sacred history-the ten letters of John; two from Peter to the Christians of Asia; and those which Paul, in chains for the gospel, dictated from imperial Rome.

From the abundant notices of the early Christians by historians and philosophers, satirists and comedians, martyrs and magistrates, Jewish, Christian, and heathen, I shall select only two for comparison with the Epistles of the apostles, and both those heathen-the celebrated letter of Pliny to Trajan, and the well established History of Tacitus-and both utterly undeniable, and admitted by the most sceptical to be beyond suspicion. Not that I suppose that the testimony of men who did not take the trouble of making any inquiry into the reality of the facts of the Christian religion, is more accurate than that of those whose lives were devoted to its study; or that we have any just reason to attach as much weight to the assertions of persons who, by their own showing, tortured and murdered men and women convicted of no crime but that of bearing the name of Christ, as to those of these martyrs whose characters they acknowledged to be blameless, and who sealed their testimony with the last and highest attestation of sincerity-their blood. Considered merely as a historian, whether as regards means of knowledge or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to whom the History of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the Letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations-the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in attesting must be accepted as true.

We are

The facts which we shall thus establish are not, in the first instance, those called miraculous. now ascertaining the general character for truthfulness of our letter-writers and historians. If we find that their general historic narrative is contradicted by that of other credible historians, then we suspect their story. But if we find that in all essential matters of public notoriety they are supported by the concurrent testimony of their foes, and that the narrative of the airacles they relate bears the seals of thousands who from foes became friends, from conviction of its truth, then we receive their witness as true. Even in Paul's day, heathen Greek writers bore testimony to the apostles, what manner of entering in they had unto the converts of Thessalonica; and how they turned to God from idols, to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead-even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come. Pliny wrote forty years later.

Pliny the younger was born A.D. 61-was prætor under Domitian-consul in the third year of Trajan, A.D. 100-was exceedingly desirous to add to his other

honours that of the priesthood; was accordingly consecrated an augur, and built temples, bought images, and consecrated them on his estates; was, in A.D. 106, appointed Governor of the Roman Provinces of Pontus and Bithynia*-a vast tract of Asia Minor, lying along the shores of the Black Sea and the Propontis; and including the province anciently called Mysia, in which were situated Pergamos and Thyatira, and in the immediate vicinity of Sardis and Philadelphia. Pliny reached his province by the usual route, the port of Ephesus, where John had lived for many years, and indited his letters A.D. 96. The letters of Peter to the strangers scattered through Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, bring us to the same mountainous region, eight hundred miles distant from Judea, whence, in earlier days, our savage ancestors received those Phoenician priests of Baal, whose round towers mark the coasts of Ireland nearest to the setting sun; and whence, about the period under consideration, came the heralds of the Sun of Righteousness, who brought the "Leabhar Eoin" which tells their children of Him in whom is the life and the light of men. Natives of these countries had been in Jerusalem during the crucifixion of Jesus, and, though only strangers, had witnessed the darkness, and the earthquake, and the rumours of what had come to pass in those days; and on the day of Pentecost had mingled with the curious crowd around the apostles, and heard them speak, in their own mother tongues, of the wonderful works of God. The remainder of the story of their conversion we gather from the letters of Peter, Jolin, and Pliny.

"Pliny, to the Emperor Trajan, wisheth health and

happiness: +

"It is my constant custom, Sire, to refer myself to you in all matters concerning which I have any doubt. For who can better direct me when I hesitate, or instruct me when I am ignorant?

"I have never been present at any trials of Christians, so that I know not well what is the subject-matter of punishment, or of inquiry, or what strictures ought to be used in either. Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether any difference ought to be made upon account of age, or whether the young and tender, and the full-grown and robust, ought to be treated all alike; whether repentance should entitle to pardon, or whether all who have once been Christians ought to be punished, though they are now no longer so; whether the name itself, although no crimes be detected, or crimes only belonging to the name, ought to be punished.

"In the meantime, I have taken this course with all who have been brought before me, and have been accused as Christians. I have put the question to them, whether they were Christians? Upon their confessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a third time, threatening also to punish them with death. Such as still persisted, I ordered away to be punished; for it was no doubt with me, whatever might be the nature of their opinion, that contu

*Lardner, vii. p. 18, et seq.

+ Pronounced Laar Owen-John's Book. Lib. x. Ep. 97, Lardner, vii. 22.

macy and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have noted down to be sent to the city.

"In a short time the crime spreading itself, even whilst under persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people came in my way. An information was presented to me, without mentioning the author, containing the names of many persons, who, upon examination, denied that they were Christians, or had even been so; who repeated after me an

invocation of the gods, and with wine and frankincense made supplication to your image, which, for that purpose, I have caused to be brought and set before them, together with the statues of the deities. Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ. None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to discharge.

"Others were named by an informer, who at first confessed themselves Christians, and afterwards denied it. The rest said they had been Christians, but had left them; some three years ago, some longer, and one or more above twenty years. They all worshipped your image, and the statues of the gods; these also reviled Christ. They affirmed that the whole of their fault or error lay in this: that they were wont to meet together, on a stated day, before it was light, and sing among themselves alternately a hymn to Christ as a God, and bind themselves by a sacrament, not to the commission of any wickedness, but not to be guilty of theft, or robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon to return it. When these things were performed, it was their custom to separate, and then to come together again to a meal, which they ate in common, without any disorder; but this they had forborne since the publication of my edict, by which, according to your command, I prohibited assemblies. After receiv ing this account, I judged it the more necessary to examine two maid-servants, which were called ministers, by torture. But I have discovered nothing besides a bad and excessive superstition.

'Suspending, therefore, all judicial proceedings, I have recourse to you for advice; for it has appeared to me a matter highly deserving consideration, especially upon account of the great number of persons who are in danger of suffering. For many of all ages, and every rank, of both sexes likewise, are accused, and will be accused. Nor has the contagion of this superstition seized cities only, but the lesser towns also, and the open country. Nevertheless, it seems to me that it may be restrained and arrested. It is certain that the temples, which were almost forsaken, begin to be frequented. And the sacred solemnities, after a long intermission, are revived. Victims, likewise, are everywhere bought up, whereas, for some time, there were few purchasers. Whence it is easy to imagine what numbers of men might be reclaimed, if pardon were granted to those who shall repent?"

“Trajan to Pliny, wisheth health and happiness :* "You have taken the right course, my Pliny, in your proceedings with those who have been brought before you as Christians; for it is impossible to establish any one rule that shall hold universally. They are not to be sought after. If any are brought before you, and are convicted, they ought to be punished. However, he that denies his being a Christian, and makes it evident in fact-that is, by supplicating to our gods-though he be suspected to have been so formerly, let him be pardoned upon repentance. But in no case, of any

* Lib. x. Ep. 98, Lardner, vii. 24.

crime whatever, may a bill of information be received without being signed by him who presents it; for that would be a dangerous precedent, and unworthy of my government."

I must request my reader now to procure a New Testament, and read, at one reading, the First General Epistle of Peter, the First General Epistle of John, and his Seven Epistles to the Churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamus, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea only about as much matter as four pages of Harper's Magazine, or half a page of the Commercial-that he may be able to do the same justice to the apostles as to the governor. He will thus be able to see the force of

the various allusions to the numbers, doctrines, morals, persecutions, and perseverance of the Christians, contained in those letters; the object which I have in view being to establish their authenticity by proving the truthfulness of their allusions to these things. If you think this too much trouble, please lay down the tract, and dismiss the consideration of religion from your thoughts. If the letters of the apostles are not worth a careful reading, it is of no consequence whether they are true or false.

1. These letters take for granted that the fact of the existence of large numbers of Christians, organized into Churches, and meeting regularly for religious worship, at the close of the first century, is a matter of public notoriety to the world. Here, in countries eight hundred miles distant from its birth-place, in the lifetime of those who had seen its Founder crucified, we find Christians scattered over Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia-Churches in seven provincial cities—the sect well known to Pliny, before he left Italy, as a proscribed and persecuted religion, the professors of which were customarily brought before courts for trial and punishment-though he had not himself been present at sach trials-and now so numerous in his provinces, that a great number of persons, of both sexes, young and old, of all ranks, natives and Roman citizens, professed Christianity. Others, influenced by their example and instruction, renounced idolatry; victims were not led to sacrifice; the sacred rites of the gods were suspended. and their temples forsaken. The existence, then, of Churches of Christ, consisting of vast numbers of converted heathens, at the close of the first century, is in no wise mythological or dubious. It is an established historical fact. The Epistles of the Apostles stand confirmed by the Epistles of the Governor and the Emperor. 2. The second great fact presented in the Epistles, and confirmed by the Letters of the Governor and the Emperor, is, that the worship of the Christian Church then was essentially the same which it is now. We find these Christians of the first century commemorating the death and resurrection of Christ, and rendering divine honours to him the "stated day" on which they assem bled for worship, and "common meal," are as plain a description of the "disciples coming together upon the first day of the week, to break bread," as a heathen could give in few words. Their terms of communion,

too, to which they pledged their members by a sacrament, | "not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, or deny a pledge committed to them," find their counterpart in every well regulated Church at this day.

The articles of the Christian faith, then, are not the "gradual accretions of centuries," nor is the "redemptive idea, as attaching to Christ, a dogma of the postAugustine period." The Churches of the first century commemorated the death and resurrection of Jesus as that of a divine person, "singing the hymn to him as a God," which their descendants sing at this day around his table :

"For ever and for ever is, O God, thy throne of might; The sceptre of thy kingdom is a sceptre that is right. Thon lovest right, and hatest ill; for God, thy God, most high,

Above thy fellows hath with th' oil of joy anointed thee." And the question will force itself upon our minds, and cannot be evaded, How did these apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens to believe their repeated assertions of the death, resurrection, and glory of Jesus? In the space of three octavo pages, Peter refers to these facts eighteen times. John, in like manner, repeatedly affirms them. The Christian religion consists in the belief of these facts, and a life corresponding to them. Now, how did the apostles persuade such multitudes of heathens to believe a report so wonderful, profess a religion so novel, renounce the gods they had worshipped from their childhood, and all the ceremonies of an attractive, sensual religion-" temples of splendid architecture, statues of exquisite sculpture, priests and victims superbly adorned, attendant beauteous youth of both sexes performing all the sacred rites with gracefulness, religious dances, illuminations, concerts of the sweetest music, perfumes of the rarest fragrance," and other more licentious enjoyments, inseparable from heathen worship? How did they persuade them to exchange all this for the assembly before daybreak, the frugal common meal, the psalm to Christ, and the commemoration of the death of a crucified malefactor? If we add that they commemorated his resurrection by observing the Lord's-day, the question still comes up, How did they come to believe that he was risen from the dead? Could a few despised strangers, or a few citizens if you will, persuade such a community, purely by natural means, to believe such a report, to care whether the Syrian Jew died or rose, or to commemorate weekly, by a solemn religious service, either his death or resurrection? It is evident they believed what they commemorated. How did they come to do so?

But whether we can answer the question or not, the fact stands out as indisputable, that not merely the writers of the Epistles and Gospels, and a few enthusiasts, but an immense multitude of all ages, of both sexes, and of every rank-the whole membership of the primitive Churches-did believe in the death, resurrection, and glory of the Lord Jesus, and did render to him

divine worship. This second great fact, affirmed in the Epistles, stands confirmed by the testimony of the heathen governor and of the Roman emperor.

3. A mere theory of a new religion, unconnected with practice, may be easily received by those who care little about any, so long as it brings no suffering or inconvenience. But the religion of these Christians was, as you see, a practical religion. If their new worship required a great departure from the worship of their childhood, their Christian morals required a still greater departure from their former mode of life. I need not remind you of the moral codes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristides, who taught that lying, thieving, adultery, and murder were lawful; nor how much worse than the theory of the best of the heathen were the lives of the worst; nor how unpopular to persons so educated would be such teaching as this-"Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead." "Laylaside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings.” "Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him. Little children, let no man deceive you he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil." So sharp, and stern, and strictly virtuous is apostolic religion, as displayed in these letters. Is it possible, then, that these converted heathens did really even approach this standard of morality? Did this gospel of Christ actually produce any such reformation of their lives?

You have the testimony of apostates, eager to save their lives by giving such information as they knew would be acceptable to the persecutor; you have the testimony of the two aged deaconesses under torture; you have the unwilling, but yet express, testimony of their torturer and murderer, that all his cruel ingenuity could discover nothing worse than an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy. What, then, does this philosophic inspector of entrails and adorer of idols call an excessive superstition and culpable obstinacy? Why, they bound themselves by the most solemn religious services not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; not to falsify their word, nor deny a pledge committed to them; and when some senseless blocks of brass were carried on men's shoulders into the court-house, to represent a mortal man, they would not adore them nor pray to them-no, not though the philosopher compiled the liturgy and set the example. For this refusal, and