A. A great portion of the human species in every generation is led to seek salvation through the medium of Christianity, without interrupting the regular course of human affairs.

CHAPTER VII.

Q. What is the subject of this chapter? A. The supposed effects of Christianity. Q. What paradox is asserted under this head? A. That a religion which the wisest and best confess to be just in its distinctions of virtue and vice, should not produce any good, but rather a bad effect. Q. What are the errors of the assertors of this paradox ?

A. One is, they look for the influence of religion in the wrong place; the other is, that they charge Christianity with many consequences for which it is not responsible.

Q. Where is its influence not to be sought for?

A. In the councils of princes, in the conduct of governments, of conquerors or intriguing parties. The kingdom of heaven is within us. This increases the uncertainty of opinions drawn from historical representations. We do not pretend that it has such irresistible power over the affairs of nations, as to surmount the force of other causes.

Q. Is the agency of Christianity upon public usages and institutions direct ?

A. No; it is not a code of civil law. It can only reach public institutions through private character. Q. Have the effects of Christianity in this point of view been important?

A. Highly so. It has mitigated the conduct of wars, the treatment of captives, the administration of despotic governments, abolished polygamy, restrained divorces; put an end to the exposure of children, the immolation of slaves, the combats of gladiators, the impurities of religious rites. It has banished the toleration of unnatural vices, meliorated the condition of the poor and infirm, triumphed over slavery in the Roman empire, and I trust will one day prevail against A WORSE SLAVERY IN THE WEST INDIES.

Q. What early testimonies have we to this effect? A. A Christian writer, so early as the second century, has testified the resistance of Christianity to wicked and licentious practices, though established by custom and law. But Socrates did not produce the slightest revolution in the manners of Athens.

Q. To what argument do you now recur?

A. That the benefit of religion being chiefly felt in private stations, necessarily escapes the observation of history. Millions in every age, whose names were never heard of, have been made better by it in conduct and disposition.

Q. What has been the effect of Christianity in every country where it has been professed?

A. A sensible, though not complete influence upon the public judgment of morals. But the value of Christianity is not to be appreciated by temporal effects, the object of revelation is, to influence human conduct in this life; but what is gained to happiness by that influence, can only be estimated by taking in the whole of human existence.

Q. Prove secondly, that Christianity is charged with many consequences for which it is not responsible.

A. It is answerable for no part of the evils of persecution, except that which has arisen from conscientious persecutors; nor can their mistake be imputed to Christianity; their error was neither Christian nor religious, but one in their moral philosophy. Had there been in the New Testament as in the Koran precepts authorizing persecution, the distinction could not have been taken, nor the defence made.

Q. Suppose it should be objected that Christianity is chargeable with every mischief, of which it has been the occasion though not the motive ?

A. I answer, if the malevolent passions be there, the world will never want an occasion. Pagan theology did not preserve the peace of the Roman empire. Bigotry carried not Alexander into the East, or Cæsar into Gaul; nor did Poland fall by a Christian crusade. If war produce less misery than formerly, it is due to Christianity.

Q. Do the differences of opinion in all ages fall within the alternative stated?

A. Very much; if we possessed the disposition which Christianity inculcates above all others, these differences would do little harm. They keep up an attention to religious subjects which might be apt to die away in the calm silence of universal agreement. I do not know that it is true, that the influence of religion is greatest where there are fewest dissenters.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Conclusion.

Q. Does not much depend in religion, as well as in other subjects, upon the order in which we dispose our inquiries?

A. Yes; a man who takes up a system of divinity with a previous opinion of its entire truth or falsehood, approaches the discussion with great disadvantages. No other system would bear this treatment. Yet this cannot intirely be avoided.

Q. What is the consequence of this situation?

A. The doctrines of religion come to us before the proofs, with that mixture of explications and inferences from which no public creed is free.

Q. What is the rational way of treating a subject of such acknowledged importance?

A. To attend alone, in the first place, to the general and substantial truth of its principles. A

judgment once satisfied of its general truth, will not only discriminate its doctrines, but will overcome the reluctance to admit articles of faith attended with difficulty of apprehension.

Q What has been the care of the preceding work?

A. To preserve the separation between evidences and doctrines as inviolable as possible; to offer a defence of Christianity, which every Christian might read without seeing the tenets in which he had been brought up, attacked, and decried.

Q. Upon what does the truth of Christianity depend?

A. Upon its leading facts, and upon them alone. They prove the existence of a transaction which cannot, even in its most general parts, be reasonably accounted for, except upon the supposition of the mission.

Q. What do we discover when we open these ancient volumes ?

A. Marks of truth, whether we consider each in itself, or collate them with one another. The four narratives are confined to the history of the Founder ; the progress of it hath come down to us in a continuation of the history, and the whole is confirmed by the strongest possible accession of testimony, original letters of the parties concerned in, and upon, the busi

ness.

Q. Does the belief of Christianity depend upon the belief of the inspiration of the Scriptures?