the most improbable of all changes: a change in principle, and a change in practice; a change in religious sentiments, which are commonly maintained most pertinaciously; a change in daily habits of life, which are relinquished most unwillingly. I find new habits and new principles assumed in spite of known hostility, and preserved in spite of rigorous persecution. I want a cause; a cause to account for this. I find an explanation in the miraculous testimony borne to the religion, and in nothing else. Allowing such miraculous testimony, the consequence follows of course; denying it, the effect must remain for ever unexplained.

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CHAPTER XII.

On the Effects of Christianity.

WHEN the question concerns the probability of truth in a revelation, we are irresistibly led to take into the consideration its effects upon human happiness. Is it of such a nature as to improve the general condition of those to whom it is proposed? To raise or to depress the character of mankind? A revelation might possibly be made on such evidence as could not be rejected, which had no such beneficial tendency. But this at once strikes our reason as a case so improbable, that we feel it would require an unusual weight of positive testimony before a revelation could be accepted by us as divine, which did not bear witness to its origin by the excellence of its immediate effects.

At the same time, in every question of this kind, the object of the revelation must be kept in view. It will make an essential difference,

whether a revelation professes to be designed to place men at once in a perfect state, or to lead them towards one. The Gospel no where professes to place men at once in a perfect state. It professes to address those who are in an unhappy and guilty condition, naturally frail, and morally corrupt: a condition requiring that God should send his Son into the world, that the world through him might be saved. To such a condition it offers a remedy: not pretending to remove all the evils incidental to such a state; but promising, in behalf of those who put themselves under its guidance, to diminish and alleviate them.

Whoever refuses to bear this in mind, is incapable of forming a judgment respecting the operation of Christianity. A world exists, in which sin and sorrow are largely mixed up. To suppose that Christianity should take these altogether away, would be to suppose that it should create the world anew. It makes-provision against them: it proposes a cure for them; and we can reasonably look for nothing more.

But there are other causes, independent of itself, of the partial benefits produced by Christianity. We have formerly seen, that the writers of the Gospel foresaw that its effects would always be inadequate to its inherent powers, and fall short of its avowed design, on account of the unwillingness of mankind to receive the remedy offered them. And to this obduracy we must in great measure attribute the evils which disfigure the face of Christianity. The first Christians, in particular, were taught to expect tribulation. And this tribulation was to come upon them, because their brethren refused to listen to the Gospel, and chose to persecute those who did. No small portion of the difficulties which have always beset Christians, arises from a similar cause: from the general discountenance which earnest piety and Christian circumspection meet with. The dread of this keeps multitudes still at a distance from God; and thus deprives them of the happiness resulting from the conscious possession of his favour, which nothing short of an entire devotion to his service can procure. And the feeling of this discourage

ment cannot but occasionally disturb the comfort of other more consistent believers.

The remainder of corruption adhering to those who do cordially embrace Christianity, is another cause of the imperfect happiness it procures to them. They have received an impression, with a force which nothing but the Christian religion could have employed, of the dreadful consequences of sin. They have declared war against it, and are striving for the mastery. But the enemy still makes head: is always restless; and will sometimes prevail. This cannot but occasion disquietude. A remedy is proposed to a diseased constitution; is accepted, and tried. But from the nature of the constitution, and inveteracy of the disease, the effect of the remedy is incomplete. Still the patient, if not in perfect health, is in a much better condition than he would have been without the remedy. And so none will deny that the man who is struggling against his evil passions, and keeping them in subjection, is in a much better moral state than he would have been by giving loose to