were from the first forewarned. "This child is set for a sign which shall be spoken against'," said the aged Simeon as he pressed the yet infant Saviour to his heart. His cross from the first was to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the Greeks foolishness; His earliest Apostles were denounced as "pestilent fellows and ringleaders of sedition," His Gospel was stigmatised by haughty historians as an "exitiabilis superstitio3," and His self-denying children in their purest and sweetest days were distinguished by this fact only, that "everywhere they were spoken against*." Eighteen hundred years have passed away, and, side by side with a happy awakenment to life and energy, we cannot deny that there is a wide-spread 1 Luke ii. 34. 2 Acts xxiv. 5, λοιμὸν καὶ κινοῦντα στάσιν. I Cor. iv. 13, ws περικαθάρματα τοῦ κόσμου ἐγενήθημεν, πάντων περίψημα. 3 See Tac. Ann. XV. 44, "" quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat...repressaque in præsens exitiabilis superstitio rursum erumpebat, non modo per Judæam, originem ejus mali, sed per urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt.” Cf. Sueton. Ner. 16, Claud. 25. Plin. Epp. x. 97, "Nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam." 4 Acts xxviii. 22; 1 Pet. ii. 12, iv. 14. In the expression "odio humani generis convicti" (Tac. I. c.), the genitive is objective, "their hatred for the human race." The Christians were confounded with the Jews, and their absence from the games &c. was construed as being mere moroseness. Cf. Tac. Hist. V. 5, where he says "adversus omnes alios hostile odium." Among other things the Christians were constantly charged with atheism, εἴ τις ἄθεος ἢ Χριστιανὸς ἢ 'ETIKоúpetos, Luc. Alex. Pseud. XXXVIII. Alpe Tous ȧ0éovs was the cry at the martyrdom of Polycarp. Cf. Dio Cass. LXVII. 14, "Homines deploratæ, illicitæ, ac desperatæ factionis." Cæcilius in Min. Fel. Oct. VIII. defection from the faith which our fathers held; nor does it require much insight to recognise that the causes of this falling away are both moral and intellectual. To enter briefly into those causes-to shew that neither Philosophy nor Criticism have shaken one truth of Christianity-to shew the extent and the glory of its individual, social and political victories, and thus to demonstrate the mighty Witness borne by History to the faith of Christ-will be the object of these Lectures; and I pray that with all their feeblenesses and imperfections they may be blessed by His Holy Spirit to the brightening of our hopes, and the deepening of our charity, by the establishment and the increase of our faith in the Son of God. Now in attributing the spread of disbelief in part to moral causes I would at the outset, and with deep sincerity and earnestness, guard myself against a misconception. It has been a common, and I may add a deplorable mistake among Christian controversialists, to assume that error in the judgment must necessarily be caused by depravity in the heart. Nothing has led to deeper irritation, or more directly tended to harden into an antichristian attitude the minds of men who might have been won by less ungenerous arguments, than this endeavour to suppress free inquiry under the crushing and insulting charge of moral obliquity. To silence a doubt, or slur a difference under the uncharitable haughtiness of "we know that this man is a sinner," is a mixture of religious Pharisaism with social 1 John ix. 24. impertinence'; and it is least of all excusable in an age which has seen a doubtful or even an adverse position towards the truths of our religion maintained by men who have deepened our love for all that is great in conduct and pure in thought, and who in their stainless lives and noble utterance give the unconscious testimony of "minds naturally Christian." But while we utterly condemn in religious controversy the mixture of moral inuendo with intellectual proof, we are justified as a warning to our own hearts, no less than those of others, in asserting the undeniable truth that sometimes, though not necessarily, and in some instances, though not in all, the first rills of heresy have flowed from the bitter fountains of a perverse will or a corrupted heart. It remains as true now as in the days of the Apostles that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God," and that "spiritual things must be 1 In a remarkable little book called The Modern Buddhist, translated by Mr Alabaster from the Kitchanukit of Chao Phya Ipipakon, foreign minister in Siam, we constantly find such complaints as the following, in answer to perfectly honest doubts and remarks: "When I had said this the missionary became angry, and saying, I was hard to teach, left me." "The Missionary replied, If any one spoke like this in European countries he would be put in prison." And in reply to a question as to the doctrine of original sin, "the Missionary answered, It is waste of time to converse with evil men who will not be taught, and so left me;" pp. 29, 34, 35. This, it need hardly be said, was not St Paul's method, but the very reverse of it. 2O testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ !" Apolog. 17. Tert. 3 1 Cor. ii. 14, ad fin., &c. "How can ye believe which receive honour from men, and seek not the honour which cometh of God spiritually discerned." The voice from heaven saying "This is my beloved Son" sounded to most of those who heard it but as the dull roll of the thunder; to some only as the unintelligible voice of an angel; to very few as the distinct and articulate utterance of God'. If it was a Christian historian who took for his motto "Pectus est quod facit theologum," it was a sceptical poet who wrote "As are the inclinations so are the opinions," it was an idealising philosopher who said "that our system of thought was often only the history of our heart." Oh my brethren, we may lose our faith in Christ from many causes, and from some which it is not for fallible man to denounce or to condemn; but it is well for us to know there is undoubtedly one path which leads with dangerous frequency from prac only?" John v. 44. Compare such passages as Ps. xxv. 14; John vii. 17; Rom. viii. 7, xiv. 17, &c. "Il y a assez de lumière pour ceux qui ne désirent que de voir, et assez d'obscurité pour ceux qui ont une disposition contraire." Pascal, Pensées, II. 151, ed. Faugère. "Christian faith," says an American writer of genius, “is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory nor can possibly imagine any: standing within, each ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendour." Nath. Hawthorne, Transformation, p. 262. 1 ὁ μὲν ἔχων τὰ κρείττονα ὦτα ἀκούει Θεοῦ· ὁ δὲ κεκωφωμένος τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς ἀκοὴν ἀναισθητεῖ λέγοντος Θεοῦ, Orig. c. Cels. II. 72. 2 Neander. followers. 3 Göthe. Hence the nickname Pectoralisten given to his 4 Fichte, Unser Denksystem ist sehr oft nur die Geschichte unseres Herzen's. Similarly he says that "Truth is descended from conscience," and that "men do not will according to their reason, but reason according to their will." Bestimmung der Menschen, p. 293, &c. tical faithlessness to speculative infidelity; from the "Yea, hath God said?" to the "Ye shall not surely die'." Let us then at least beware that in us unholiness do not cloud the spiritual eye and dull the spiritual ear: for the rank mists which reek upward from the sinful heart do tend most fatally to obliterate the Image, the Memory, the Life of Christ-they end by hiding from the human soul even the vision of its Creator in fold on fold of a more and more impenetrable night'. 1 Cf. Pascal, Pens. II. 108, "Nous connaissons la vérité non seulement par la raison, mais encore par le cœur." "Love God and He will dwell with you; obey God and He will reveal the truth of his deepest teaching to you." Robertson, God's Revelations of Heaven. But no one has expressed this truth in nobler language than Clem. Alex., Strom. V. I. 13, Kal Toûтo ĥv ö jvíğato öσtis åpa ἦν ἐκεῖνος ὁ ἐπίγραψας τῇ εἰσόδῳ τοῦ ἐν Ἐπιδαύρῳ νεῶ· ἁγνὸν χρὴ νήοιο θυώδεος ἐντὸς ἴοντα ἔμμεναι ἁγνείη δ ̓ ἔστι φρονεῖν ὅσια— and then, after quoting Matt. xviii. 3, he continues, evraûla yàp ỏ νεως τοῦ Θεοῦ τρισὶν ἡδρασμένος θεμελίοις, πίστει, ἐλπίδι, ἀγάπῃ φαίVETAL. Cf. id. VII. x. 57. A crowd of writers in all ages have testified to the same fact. "Teneritas conscientiæ," says Tertullian, “ obduratur in callositatem voluntarii erroris." Ad Nationes, II. 1. Shakspeare has not suffered it to pass unnoticed : "For when we in our viciousness grow hard, To our confusion." "Wer es glaubt dem ist das Heilge nach," said Schiller; and so too Schleiermacher, "Der Glaube ist in mir lebendig durch die That." 2 Witness the historic filiation of such writers as La Mettraie to Voltaire; of Strauss to Hegel, and of Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer to |