"With these pretensions then, it arose in an enlightened and sceptical age, but amongst a despised and narrow-minded people. It earned hatred and persecution at home, by its liberal genius and opposition to the national prejudices. It earned contempt abroad by its connexion with the country where it was born, but which sought to strangle it in its birth. Emerging from Judæa, it made its way outward through the most polished regions of the world—Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Rome and in all it attracted notice and provoked hostility. Successive massacres, and attempts at extermination, prosecuted for ages by the whole force of the Roman Empire, it bore without resistance, and seemed to draw fresh vigour from the axe; but assaults, in the way of argument from whatever quarter, it was never ashamed or unable to repel; and, whether attacked or not, it was resolutely aggressive. In four centuries, it had pervaded the civilized world, it had mounted the throne of the Cæsars, it had spread beyond the limits of their sway, and had made inroads upon barbarian nations whom their eagles had never visited. It had gathered all genius and all learning into itself, and made the literature of the world its own. It survived the inundation of the barbarian tribes, and conquered the world once more, by converting its conquerors to the faith. It survived an age of barbarism. It survived the restoration of letters. It survived an age of free enquiry and scepticism, and has long stood its ground in the field of argument, and commanded the intelligent assent of the greatest minds that ever were. It has been the parent of civilization, and the nurse of learning; and if light and humanity and freedom be the boast of Modern Europe, it is to Christianity that she owes them. Exhibiting in the life of Jesus a picture, varied and minute, of the perfect human united with the divine, in which the mind of man has not been able to find a deficiency or detect a blemish—a picture copied from no model, and rivalled by no copy-it has satisfied the moral wants of mankind;-and it has retained, through every change, a salient spring of life which enables it to throw off corruption and repair decay, and renew its youth, amidst outward hostility and inward divisions. Yet this religion, and all its moral miracles,-this mighty impulse, which no time or

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space can check or exhaust-proceeds, if we believe Strauss and his admirers, from a Myth casually produced in the fancies of some Galilean peasants. The moral world of modern civilization has sprung from the fortuitous concourse of some atoms of Mythology in the brains of unknown SOMEBODIES!""

18 Bishop Fitzgerald: "Cautions for the Times," XXIX.

:

CHAPTER XVIII.

IT IS CERTAIN THAT THE CERTAINTY WHICH CHARACTERIZES THE DEMONSTRATION OF THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY,

IS CERTAINTY OF THE HIGHEST KIND.

"There always exists a class of minds to whom the plain and simple is distasteful; who have no pleasure in ordinary proofs or unentangled deductions. GIVE THESE MEN WHAT KIND OR AMOUNT OF EVIDENCE YOU MAY, THEY ARE CERTAIN TO DEMAND OTHER AND MORE."-C. FORSTER.

I. WHAT is the highest kind of certainty?

From a consideration of the circumstances in which mankind. are placed it will appear that the several kinds of evidence, that derived from intuition, from demonstration, from the senses, from moral reasoning, and from human testimony, have each their respective provinces, and, if complete in themselves, carry with them an equal degree of assurance. Any attempt to exalt one of these species of evidence to the depreciation of the rest, is scarcely less unphilosophical than to misapply them. Des Cartes has been justly ridiculed for taking the pains to prove his own existence by demonstration, which he learnt from consciousness. But it is, in fact, a similar absurdity to require demonstrative proof of that which we know by sensation, as the existence of external things, or to demand sensitive proof, or demonstrative proof, or intuitive conviction, of that which is in its own nature incapable of any other evidence than that which is called probable.

"Probable! well, perhaps so;" says an objector; "but as far as the evidence for Revelation is concerned, I should have liked it better if it had been mathematical." What! a mathematical demonstration of moral truths? Is this a rational

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request? Will the objector undertake to show how it could be possible even to Omnipotence itself, to furnish demonstrative proof of an historical fact? Or, with his extravagant exaltation of mathematical certainty, will he pretend that he is more certain of the equality or inequality of certain angles in his diagram, than of the real existence of the pen with which he describes that diagram? He has the most perfect confidence in the certainty of mathematical demonstration. Very well but has he less confidence in the certainty of that operation of the senses by which (in aid of the reasoning faculty) he has arrived at that demonstration? He is sure that mathematical proof will never deceive him. But how is he sure of it? Is it from consciousness? Then is he sure of his consciousness? If not, he is not sure after all. But if he is sure of his consciousness; then he posseses a certainty which is independent of demonstration.

But it will be said, We may with comparative safety trust the evidence of consciousness and that of the senses; it is only "probable evidence" that is untrustworthy. Language, such as this, however, betrays a misconception of the meaning of terms. The word probable, when applied to evidence of this nature, "does not imply any deficiency in the proof, but only marks the particular nature of that proof, as contradistinguished from other species of evidence. It is opposed not to what is certain, but to what admits of being demonstrated after the manner of mathematicians.' But even in the ordinary acceptation of the term, the fact is, that for all the weighty concerns of daily life, men trust implicitly to probable evidence alone. "PROBABILITY is the very guide of life." "Indeed, if it were not just and reasonable to place effectual reliance on what is termed probable evidence, the business of the world would soon stand still. Human testimony is the main spring of all that is planned or done at the bar, in the forum, or in the senate. Moral probability is all that we attain, or seek to attain, in politics or jurisprudence, or even in most of the sciences. Nor is it too much to affirm, that every individual

1 Stewart's Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. ii. ch. iv. sect. 4.

risks without hesitation his health, or his life, or his fortune, or reputation, daily in some way or other, on the strength of evidence of which, if it came to be narrowly examined, would not appear to have half the certainty which we may arrive at, respecting the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, and the veracity of the Mosaic records."" It should also be considered that the evidence of a Divine Revelation must not be such as to annihilate the conditions on which man is to be made virtuous and happy, if he is to be made so at all. It must not be inconsistent with the exercises of either his reason or his faith; nor prevent the play of his moral dispositions, nor triumph by mere violence over his prejudices; it must not operate purely upon the passions or the senses, nor overbear all possibility of offering resistance. The happiness which God originally designed for his intelligent and moral creatures was a voluntary happiness springing out of the wellbalanced and well-directed activity of all the principles of their nature. Any revelation, therefore, must proceed on the same basis, both as regards itself and the mode in which it is given. Moral evidence is the appropriate proof of moral truth. The evidence that attests the truth of Christianity, vast, varied, and of great cumulative power, though it be, is not, therefore, irresistible. Moral subjects can admit of no evidence which is incompatible with human responsibility. So that to object that Christianity has no certainty because it has not mathematical certainty is the same thing as saying that it cannot be true because it wants the evidence which would deprive men of the liberty of rejecting it.

II. What is it that we want to know?

We want to know-whence we came-whither we are going? Whether there be in truth, a tremendous Personality, to whose infinite faculties the "great" and the "little" (as we call them) equally vanish-whose universal presence fills all space, in any point of which he exists entire in the amplitude of all his infinite attributes-whose universal government extends even to us, and our fellow-atoms, called men; within whose

Archbp. Sumner's "Records of the Creation": vol. i. p. 257.