The Christian religion is the result of two factors, neither of which can be omitted if a true description is to be given. On the one hand there is the objective element, which consists in the manifestation and revelation of God to His people for the purpose of salvation; and on the other side there is the subjective element, which consists in the appropriation of this manifestation and what it implies by man through faith. Both elements enter into and form the constituent elements of a new life, which all Christians share in-common, and which is the essence of Christianity. This common life of Jesus and His people has many ways by which it can make itself seen and known. Christians have from the beginning exercised no small influence upon the ordinary political and moral life of the world. They have been able to effect changes in generally received moral ideas and maxims. They have altered the course and character of legislation. They have introduced new opinions and beliefs. They have formed fellowships for worship, built places of meeting, held councils and assemblies, and in many ways given evidence of their presence and power in the world. But it must always be remembered that Christianity is neither the church simply, nor theology, nor Christian ethics. It is more than all these put together. The common life of Jesus and His people, which is the core of Christianity, manifests itself in an outward visible organization for the purpose of worship, which is commonly called the church (see Church). But this worship is not Christianity; still less are the various institutions and ceremonies according to which worship is carried on.

Christianity cannot help powerfully affecting the whole of the intellectual side of man’s life. The spiritual events on which it rests must have their rationale, and the spiritual forces which course through it must have their rule, and man must more or less comprehend them, and assimilate them. The Christian cannot help having a very different idea of God from that held by Aristotle or Plato. The Christian regards sin as something which affects the whole human race, while the pagan believes it to be the mistake or misfortune of individuals. Christianity cannot help remoulding the beliefs and opinions of mankind, but theology and Christianity are two very different things.

The Christian is moved by moral impulses and guided by moral principles which are peculiar to himself. He cannot look on marriage, for example, from either the purely economic or the purely sensuous point of view. He cannot help reorganizing the scheme of virtues, and giving to the principle of love a pre-eminence which it has not in pagan ethics. Christianity cannot help putting a new face on morality, but Christian ethics and Christianity are still not one and the same thing.

Christianity includes all these and much more besides. It is nothing less than the whole round of human life in all its various departments in so far as it is related to and illumined and dominated by the divine love revealed in Jesus Christ. It is the presence of Jesus among His people and all that is implied in such a presence.

The close and inseparable connection between Jesus Christ and Christianity, which is implied in the name, and which study only makes more and more evident, produces the inevitable consequence that our view of the nature and characteristics of Christianity must depend on the answer which we give to the question which Jesus himself put to His disciples—“Whom do ye say that I, the Son of man, am ĭ ” There are different theories of Christianity, because there are different theories of Christ, and in order to know how various conceptions of the nature of Christianity arise it is necessary to be familiar with the various views which men have held and hold about the nature and work of Christ. For example, different theories of Christianity arise when we ask what was the relation existing between Jesus and what went before Him, what was the relation in which Jesus stood to His contemporaries and His immediate followers, what is the connection which subsisted between Jesus and the future. All these inquiries reveal different theories about the nature and work of Christ, which are reproduced in different theories of the essential nature of Christianity, and enable men whose opinions and principles are widely different to call themselves, to their own satisfaction at least, Christians.

Jesus Christ claimed to have a definite relation to the past history of that people among whom He was born. In His teaching He put himself at the end of the Old Testament, and declared that He came to fulfil the Law and the Prophets. Christianity, therefore, however it be explained, has a close connection with Judaism, and the religion of Jesus cannot be considered without regard to the religion of Moses. This is now universally acknowledged, however variously the relation between the two may be explained. Criticism finds an ample confirmation of the claims of Christ in the intimate connection in which His teaching, life, and work stand to the Old Testament and the past life of the inspired Hebrew people. The whole of the Mosaic dispensation, the whole of the Jewish economy, with its prophecy, priesthood, and kingship, is recognized as summed up in the person and work of Christ. The Old Testament, which without Christ is but a collection of sacred books written at different times and in various manners, is regarded when looked at through Christ as an harmonious whole of anticipatory revelation. Indeed, one of the chief differences which critical apologetic finds between the Old Testament and other so-called sacred books is, that Christ is at the end of the Old Testament, and that no other scriptures have such a conclusion. But all this implies that Christianity is a development from Judaism, and that our idea of the one will be modified by our conception of the other. Those who refuse to admit that Judaism is more than one of the many natural religions of mankind can. hardly admit the supernatural character of Christianity, or regard it in any other light than as the outcome, perhaps the highest outcome possible, of that side in man’s nature which has been called by some the religious faculty. Those who attempt to derive Mosaic institutions from Egypt, who seek the basis of Hebrew prophecy in epileptic tendencies, and see nothing in the theocratic idea which was not suggested by ordinary kingship, cannot have much difficulty in analyzing Christianity into the natural development of the religious sentiment aided by a somewhat extravagant enthusiasm. Those, on the other hand, who find it impossible to accept the assumptions, and to get over the innumerable difficulties attending the naturalist theory of the Old Testament and of the history of the Hebrew people, find in Christianity something different in kind as well as in degree from all natural religions. Modern criticism even of the negative kind often indirectly supports the supernaturalist theory of the Old Testament and of Christianity, for its fundamental maxim, that waters cannot rise higher than their source, has proved the impossibility of explaining away Old Testament institutions and New Testament truths into merely the natural outcome of the religious faculties of a peculiar people. It has proved that the Old Testament religion contains materials which were not got from the intercourse of the Jews with other nations, and which did not arise naturally from the geographical position or the ethnographical characteristics of the Hebrew people. It has shown that the Old Testament religion was not a natural stream gathered from many a smaller rill, but came forth gushing, like the water of Hebrew history, from the Rock which contained it; and in doing so it has given its testimony to the altogether unique and supernatural character of Christianity.

The relation of Jesus to His contemporaries, and of His disciples and their writings to the founders of the various ethnic religions, is another point whence proceed various views of the nature of Christianity. The old deist view, adopted and intensified by the Encyclopedists, that Jesus was a charlatan, that His disciples were partly cheats and partly dupes, and that Christianity was founded in fraud and perpetuated by deceit, has to all intents and purposes disappeared. But many believe that Christianity is only one of the many religions which are all of them true though none of them contain the whole truth. The modern notion of evolution has been called in to enforce this view, and Christianity is explained to be the most perfect development yet reached by the religious spirit of mankind; while the character of Jesus and the New Testament writings are explained on the same principle. On theories of this kind Christianity is the prcduction of the natural forces of the period which gave birth to it, and· contains nothing which cannot be traced back to the circumstances of the time, and the conditions of humanity. All such theories commonly rest on the general principle that the supernatural is impossible, and that whatever involves a miracle is tpso facto incredible, and then proceed by means of some special principle to explain the presence of facts which seem to imply the supernatural. (See article Apologetics.) These principles are used to explain not so much the origin of Christianity itself as the origin of the Christian writings of the New Testament, and the production of the scheme of doctrine and morals therein contained. Perhaps the most ingenious of these theories is that cluster which has been produced by the writers of the Tübingen school, who have suggested the general method which has been almost universally followed by anti-supernaturalist writers. The method is by an ingenious negative criticism to separate between the original elements of Christianity as these were present in the mind of Jesus and communicated by Him to His disciples, and those elements which were afterwards added by more philosophical adherents, and to explain how, out of the conflict between the two opposite tendencies of Judaism and antiJudaism, the various and conflicting elements at last settled into a somewhat harmonious whole. By this ingenious method Jesus is reduced to the position of a Jewish rabbi, not much more noticeable than some of his contemporaries, and Christianity is not the religion of Jesus, but what grew out of that religion when it was subjected to the influences of Roman civilization, Greek philosophy, and Eastern theosophy. Such theories are unsupported by external, and rest confessedly on internal evidence. The weakness of internal evidence when unsupported by external is well known, atíd in this case the internal evidence is anything but strong. There are many serious objections to be taken to the Tübingen hypotheses (see article Bible) merely as hypotheses, and these difficulties are so great that it is almost evident the hypotheses would never have been put forward unless the anti-supernaturalist idea of Christianity had been taken for granted at the outset. There can be little doubt that if the supernatural be admitted these various hypotheses, while they suggest some difficulties which have not yet been solved, will be found to be at variance with the plain results both of external and internal evidence.

On the other hand those who believe in the supernatural take a different view of the relation of Jesus to His contemporaries. He was no mere Jewish rabbi, but spake as never man spake, and did what never man did. He was the manifestation of God, and came to give by His presence, person, and work, as well as by what He said, the full revelation of God. He was while on earth the centre of the world’s history, to whom all had looked forward, to whom all look back. And Christianity is not the simple product of the contemporary philosophical and religious systems, but is the embodiment of the unique appearance and work of Christ.

The relation in which Christianity stands to the future is also a basis on which various views of its nature have been rested, according to the theory of the peculiar powers of diffusion and propagation which it is supposed to possess. Anti-supematuralists consider Christianity to be merely a moral force, acting through mere moral enlightenment; but this has already been sufficiently dwelt upon. There are, however, what may be called two Christian views of the modus propagandi of Christianity, which produce two of the real nature of Christianity itself. This difference of view is best seen in the variety of answers given to the question how Christianity subsisted after the departure of Christ, and how it subsists now from age to age, a more or less compact organic life in the world. The various answers given may be roughly placed in two classes as they lay stress on the spiritual or the mechanical side of the process, and enlarge on the spiritual or the mechanical influences at work. Those who take what may be called the spiritual view of Christianity hold that it was sustained after the ascension of Christ by the mission and work of the Holy Spirit, whose presence and influence enable it to go on from age to age, spreading in the world and developing according to the laws of its growth. And they believe that as the chief result of Christ’s work consisted in a change of moral relation between God and those for whom Christ died, the spread and permauence of Christianity is purely moral, and manifests itself mainly in a change of wilL Of course all this takes place in special ways and by appropriate means. These means are called the means of grace, and are usually held to be the Word, Sacraments, and Prayer; but it is always to be understood that all such means are secondary or subordinate, and that the primary means of grace is the Holy Spirit, who works through these subordinate means, but may and does work in other ways. It is always understood that the operations of the Spirit cannot be limited to special actions nor confined by mechanical laws. On the other hand those who look at Christianity from what may be called the mechanical point of view are inclined to lay stress upon the means by which the Spirit works. They do not ignore the mission of the Holy Ghost nor His work, but are apt to say that He works only in certain prescribed ways, and through one set of means, and the tendency is to lay almost exclusive stress on one set of subordinate means—the Sacraments, and to represent that the persistence and spread of Christianity depend upon the constancy and correctness of sacramental ceremonies.

These opposite views of the nature of Christianity depend upon differences of dogmatic conception which may be briefly indicated. All through the one view, a change in the relationship between God’s will and man’s will is held to be the fundamental result which flows from the work of Christ. All through the other view man’s nature rather than man’s will is considered, and the result of Christ’s work is looked on rather as a process within human nature than as a change in moral relations between man and God. In this way the progress of Christianity is looked on as the gradual semi-physical impregnation of human nature by the nature of Christ, a prolongation of the Incarnation rather than a development of the consequences of the finished work of Christ, to be produced by keeping Christ incarnate in the sacrifice of the Mass and impregnating mankind by means of Transubstantiation in the Sacrament of the altar. The one view is the view of churches which have accepted the Reformation, the other is that of churches which have not.

These various conceptions of Christianity may be further illustrated by the views which are held by the partisans of each concerning the relations between Christianity and the Bible. The Bible and Christianity cannot be separated, but different opinions may be and have been held about the relation in which the two stand to each other. On the one hand naturalists, and those who take the mechanical view of Christianity, are inclined to regard the Bible chiefly as a compendium of abstract truths, which may be condensed into dogmas and summarized in creeds; while those who take the spiritual view of Christianity regard the Bible as the medium which reveals God and His gracious deab'ngs personally to the believing reader or hearer. To the one the Bible is a quarry of doctrines to be rationally criticized or implicitly accepted when once stamped as genuine by the church, to the other it is above all things a means of grace which the most ignorant can use and profit by. To the naturalist the Bible has been formed by the church, it is simply the natural production of the minds of those who formed the old Jewish and the early Christian communities, and grew to be what it is without the aid of superhuman intervention. To those who have adopted a mechanical view of Christianity the Bible is also the product of the church, but of the supernatural power in the church, and has grown to be what it is because it has been sanctioned by the church. To those who take the spiritual view of the nature of Christianity, the Bible, on the other hand, is and always has been the formative power in the church and that round which the church gathers itself, for it is the presence of God speaking to His people.

Both naturalists and those who hold a mechanical theory of Christianity agree in holding that there is an external sort of development in the Bible, and that the church can go beyond the Bible, whereas those who hold the spiritual view of Christianity deny both these positions. Naturalists hold that one part of the Bible is beyond the other, and since the Bible is simply the outcome of man’s religious thoughts and feelings in certain ages and places, they believe that men now may give utterance to thoughts and sentiments which in depth of feeling and insight may surpass those contained in the Bible. The Tübingen theologians, for example, believe that the New Testament is a series of deposits of religious truth, in which the truths taught by Jesus are supplemented by the teachings of His disciples, by the lessons of Paul, and by the theories of Christians educated in the philosophy of Greece; while Dr Newman considers that the church, in virtue of a supernatural gift bestowed upon her, can add to the doctrines contained in the Bible according to certain well-defined lines of development. On the other hand those who hold the spiritual view of Christianity believe that the church can never go beyond the Bible, and that progress in Christian theology means greater insight into the manifestation of God in the Bible and greater power to interpret the supernatural facts and forces made known therein.

The various theories differ also in the closeness of connection which they think subsists between Christianity and the Bible. The naturalist and those who put the church above the Bible as the formative power in Christianity both make the relation between Christianity and the Bible a purely intellectual one, whereas those who hold by the spiritual view make the Bible a means of grace and not merely the quarry whence to hew theological dogmas. But the naturalist agrees with spiritual Christians in maintaining the authoritative character of the Bible, while the mechanical Christian sets the Bible aside when it does not agree with church tradition. With the naturalist, however, the Bible is authoritative because it is the only set of documents which tell him about Christianity in its primitive state. It is authoritative because it is the only witness to the historical facts of Christianity, not because it is to be a law to him. To the spiritual Christian, on the other hand, the Bible is authoritative because it is a revelation of those spiritual forces and a record of those spiritual events on which Christianity still depends, and which teach him the way of salvation.

To sum up, then, Christianity claims to be no mere social revolution or natural step in the march of human progress. It is a religion whose sources are not to be found within man’s nature but outside of it in the saving revelation of God in Christ, and Jesus is thus the author and giver of an eternal life which spreads itself and is maintained, not by mechanical contrivance, but by the living Spirit of God entering into human history, and building on the basis of reconciliation a kingdom of God which is both human and...

_Sketch of its History_. The Christian religion was published by its great Author in Judea, a short time before the death of Herod the Great, and toward the conclusion of the long reign of Augustus. While other religions had been accommodated to the peculiar countries in which they had taken their origin, and had indeed generally grown out of incidents connected with the history of those to whom they were addressed, Christianity was so framed as to be adapted to the whole human race; and although, for the wisest reasons, it was first announced to the Jews, who had peculiar advantages for forming an accurate judgment with regard to it, it was early declared that, in conformity to predictions which had long been known, and long interpreted, as referring to a new communication of the divine will, it was to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and was to carry salvation to the ends of the earth. Although Christianity originated in Judea, it was not long confined within the narrow limits of the Holy Land. The open manner in which it was announced, the length of time during which its Author publicly addressed his countrymen, the innumerable miracles which he performed, and, above all, the report of the resurrection under circumstances which must have been communicated to the imperial government at Rome, excited the deep attention of the numerous Jews and proselytes who, from surrounding nations, regularly went up to Jerusalem, and of whom vast numbers were actually in that city when the resurrection must have been the subject of universal discussion. They very naturally carried to the different countries in which they usually resided, the astonishing intelligence with which they had been furnished; and provision was soon made for fulfilling the prediction which Jesus had uttered, that his Gospel would, before the destruction of Jerusalem, be circulated and embraced by many through the wide extent of the Roman empire. The Apostle Peter, in consequence of what he knew to be a solemn injunction from Heaven, communicated to a Gentile the truths of Christianity. St. Paul, who had distinguished himself by his enmity to the Christians, and by the cruelty with which he had persecuted them, having been converted, devoted himself to lay the foundations of the Gospel through a large portion of the most enlightened part of the world; and the miraculous gift of tongues, by which humble and illiterate men found themselves at once able to speak the languages of different nations, left no doubt that they were bound to preach their faith as extensively as had been marked out to them by the last instructions which they had received from their Master. They had to struggle with the most formidable difficulties in prosecuting this undertaking; for which, had they trusted merely to their own strength, and their own natural endowments, they were wholly unqualified.

The lofty profession which Christianity makes as a religion, and the promises it holds forth to mankind, entitle it to the most serious consideration of all. For it may in truth be said, that no other religion presents itself under aspects so sublime, or such as are calculated to awaken desires and hopes so enlarged and magnificent. It not only professes to be from God, but to have been taught to men by the Son of God incarnate in our nature, the Second Person in the adorable trinity of divine Persons, “the same in substance, equal in power and glory.” It declares that this divine personage is the appointed Redeemer of mankind from sin, death, and misery; that he was announced as such to our first parents upon their lapse from the innocence and blessedness of their primeval state; that he was exhibited to the faith and hope of the patriarchs in express promises; and, by the institution of sacrifices, as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, so that man might be reconciled to God through Him, and restored to his forfeited inheritance of eternal life. It represents all former dispensations of true religion, all revelations of God’s will, and all promises of grace from God to man, as emanating from the anticipated sacrifice and sacerdotal intercession of its Author, and as all preparatory to the introduction of his perfect religion; and that as to the great political movements among the nations of antiquity, the rise and fall of empires were all either remotely or proximately connected with the designs of his advent among men. It professes to have completed the former revelations of God’s will and purposes; to have accomplished ancient prophecies; fulfilled ancient types; and taken up the glory of the Mosaic religion into its own “glory that excelleth;” and to contain within itself a perfect system of faith, morals, and acceptable worship. It not only exhibits so effectual a sacrifice for sin, that remission of all offences against God flows from its merits to all who heartily confide in it; but it proclaims itself to be a remedy for all the moral disorders of our fallen nature; it casts out every vice, implants every virtue, and restores man to “the image of God in which he was created,” even to “righteousness and true holiness.”

The Roman empire at the period of their commencing the attempt, comprehended almost the whole of the civilized world, and thus included within it nations whose habits, customs, and sentiments essentially differed, and whom it required the most dexterous policy to unite in one community, or to subject to one government. The most effectual method by which, during the commonwealth, and at the rise of the empire, this had been accomplished, was a politic respect to the religious opinions which all these nations entertained. Not only were their modes of worship treated with scrupulous reverence, but their gods, in conformity with the genius of Paganism, were incorporated or associated with the deities of Rome, and they were thus joined to their conquerors by the strongest ties by which the affections can be secured. At all times religion had been an object of prominent interest with the Romans: at the foundation of the city, Romulus had professed to be directed by Heaven: during the whole period of the republic, the most sacred attention had been paid to the rites and ceremonies sanctioned by the prevailing superstition, the prosperity of the state was invariably ascribed to the protection of the gods, and the most impressive solemnities, combined with the richest splendour and magnificence, cast around polytheism a mysterious sanctity, which even the philosophers affected to revere. Precautions accordingly had been early taken to prevent innovations upon the established ritual; foreign rites were prohibited till they had obtained the sanction of the senate; and when the solicitation of this sanction was neglected, the persons guilty of the neglect were frequently punished. From the nature of Paganism, it was perfectly consistent with its spirit to conjoin, with any particular mode of it, the forms which elsewhere prevailed. These additions left all which had been previously honoured in unimpaired vigour and influence, and, in fact, only increased the appearance of profound regard for religion, which the Romans so long assumed. But this part of the political constitution, lightly as it affected other religions, at once struck at the root of Christianity, which, unlike the prevailing modifications of idolatry, prohibited the worship of all the deities before whose altars mankind had for ages bent, and required, as essential for obtaining the divine favour, that they who believed in it should pay undivided homage to the one God, whose existence it revealed. The extension of the Gospel thus necessarily carried with it opposition to the most ancient and most revered law of the empire, and it was impossible for those who judged of it merely from this circumstance, without investigating its nature and tendency, to hesitate in directing against it the statutes which the zeal of their fathers had provided, to prevent such a revolution as would be produced by so thorough and so alarming a change in their religious principles. No sooner, however, had the message of salvation been addressed indiscriminately to all men, and, from the evidence by which it was accompanied, had brought numbers to acknowledge the heavenly source from which it is derived, than the detestation of it previously entertained burst forth in all its violence; and it is apparent that this had been widely and openly expressed before any imperial edicts were directed against the Christians. Tacitus, in the celebrated passage in which he mentions the disciples of Jesus, and which refers to a period not more than thirty years distant from the ascension, represents it as notorious in Rome, that Christ, during the reign of Tiberius, had been put to death as a criminal; he asserts that his adherents had long been odious on account of their enormities; he laments that their destructive superstition had found its way to the capital of the empire; and he attributes the melancholy fate to which they were condemned to the general persuasion, that they were actuated by hatred to the whole human race. It is necessary to keep this fact steadily in view, to form an accurate idea of that opposition which Christianity had to encounter. This opposition is not to be estimated merely by reference to particular statutes, or even to be considered as fully exhibited when we have gathered together the public proceedings which have been recorded in history, or deplored in the writings of those who sought to avert them. It is to be remembered that even when the laws which the frantic zeal of some of the emperors had enacted were repealed, the general law of the empire was still in force; that it was competent for every one who had the cruelty to do so, to turn it against the Christians; and that the firm, though mistaken, conviction that the Christian profession involved in it the most revolting impiety, the most tremendous guilt, and the most dangerous hostility to the best interests of the state, would lead numbers to indulge their antipathy, when little notice was taken of the sufferers, and would keep the disciples of the hated faith in a state of unceasing alarm. (See _Persecution_.) What was the effect of this depressing situation? Did it check the dissemination of the Gospel, or confine it to the men by whom it was preached? So far was this from being the case, that from the period of the death, and, as it must here he termed, the alleged resurrection of Jesus, it was embraced by immense numbers in all the countries to which it was conveyed; and even while they were contemplating the sacrifices and the trials to which, by attaching themselves to it, they would be exposed, they did not hesitate to relinquish the religion in which they had been educated, and to exchange for misery and death all the comforts which the strongest feelings and propensities of our nature lead men to value and to pursue. Finally, imperial Rome bowed to the religion it had persecuted, and the emperor Constantine became a Christian.

Its promises both to individuals and to society are of the largest kind. It represents its Founder as now exercising the office of the High Priest of the human race before God, and as having sat down at his right hand, a mediatorial and reconciling government being committed to him, until he shall come to judge all nations, and distribute the rewards of eternity to his followers, and inflict its never-terminating punishments upon those who reject him. By virtue of this constitution of things, it promises pardon to the guilty, of every age and country, who seek it in penitence and prayer, comfort to the afflicted and troubled, victory over the fear of death, a happy intermediate state to the disembodied spirit, and finally the resurrection of the body from the dead, and honour and immortality to be conferred upon the whole man glorified in the immediate presence of God. It holds out the loftiest hopes also as to the world at large. It promises to introduce harmony among families and nations, to terminate all wars and all oppressions, and ultimately to fill the world with truth, order, and purity. It represents the present and past state of society, as in contest with its own principles of justice, mercy, and truth; but teaches the final triumph of the latter over every thing contrary to itself. It exhibits the ambition, the policy, and the restlessness of statesmen and warriors, as but the overruled instruments by which it is working out its own purposes of wisdom and benevolence; and it not only defies the proudest array of human power, but professes to subordinate it by a secret and irresistible working to its own designs. Finally, it exhibits itself as enlarging its plans, and completing its designs, by moral suasion, the evidence of its truth, and the secret divine influence which accompanies it. Such are the professions and promises of Christianity, a religion which enters into no compromise with other systems; which represents itself as the only religion now in the world having God for its author; and in his name; and by the hope of his mercy, and the terrors of his frown, it commands the obedience of faith to all people to whom it is published upon the solemn sanction, “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.”

The propagation of Christianity assumes a new aspect after it became the religion of the empire, and was guarded by the protection and surrounded by the munificence of imperial power. The causes which, in the first stage of its existence, had most powerfully acted against it, were now turned to its support; and all the motives by which men are usually guided led them to enter with, at least, apparent conviction into its sanctuaries. Not only was persecution, after the reign of Constantine, at an end, but with the exception of the short reign of Julian, who, having apostatized from Christianity, and become intoxicated with the fascinating speculations of the Platonic philosophy, was eager to raise the temples which his predecessor had laid in ruins, promotion and wealth and honour could be most effectually secured by transferring to the Gospel the zeal which had been in vain exhausted to preserve the sinking fabric of Paganism and idolatry. The emperors, who had displayed their zeal and their attachment to the religion of Jesus, by forcing their own subjects to profess it, conceived it to be their duty to communicate so great a blessing to all the nations which they could influence; and when they found it necessary to declare war against the savage tribes which pressed upon the frontiers, or forced themselves within the precincts of the empire, they carried on hostilities with the view of rendering these instrumental no less to the diffusion of their religious tenets, than to the vindication of their authority, and the security of their dominions. The vanquished invaders felt little reluctance to purchase the forbearance or the clemency of their conquerors, by submitting to receive their religion; and this species of conversion, so little connected with the great objects which revelation was designed to accomplish, leaving, in fact, all the gross superstitious practices and all the immoral abominations which had previously existed, was boastfully held forth as a decisive proof of the triumph of the Gospel.

Corresponding with these professions, which throw every other religion that pretends to offer hope to man into utter insignificance, it is allowed that the evidences of its truth ought to be adequate to sustain the weight of so vast a fabric, and that men have a right to know that they are not deluded with a grand and impressive theory, but are receiving from this professed system of truth and salvation “the true sayings of God.” Such evidence it has afforded in its splendid train of miracles; in its numerous appeals to the fulfilment of ancient PROPHECIES; in its own powerful INTERNAL EVIDENCE; in the INFLUENCE which it has always exercised, and continues to exert, upon the happiness of mankind; and in various collateral circumstances. Under the heads of _Miracles_ and _Prophecy_, those important branches of evidence will be discussed, and to them the reader is referred. It is only necessary here to say, that the miracles to which Christianity appeals as proofs of its divine authority, are not only those which were wrought by Christ and his Apostles, but also those which took place among the patriarchs, under the law of Moses, and by the ministry of the Prophets; for the religion of those ancient times was but Christianity in its antecedent revelations. All these miracles, therefore, must be taken collectively, and present attestations of the loftiest kind, as being manifestly the work of the “finger of God,” wrought under circumstances which precluded mistake, and exhibiting an immense variety, from the staying of the very wheels of the planetary system,--as when the sun and moon paused in their course, and the shadow on the dial of Ahaz went backward,--to the supernatural changes wrought upon the elements of matter, the healing of incurable diseases, the expulsion of tormenting demons, and the raising of the dead. Magnificent as this array of miracles is, it is equalled by the prophetic evidence, founded upon the acknowledged principle, that future and distant contingencies can only be known to that Being, one of whose attributes is an absolute prescience. And here, too, the variety and the grandeur presented by the prophetic scheme exhibit attestations to the truth of Christianity suited to its great claims and its elevated character. Within the range of prophetic vision all time is included, to the final consummation of all things; and the greatest as well as the smallest events are seen with equal distinctness, from the subversion of mighty empires and gigantic cities, to the parting of the raiment of our Lord, and the casting of the lot for his robe by the Roman guard stationed at his cross.

The foundation of the empire, not long after the days of Constantine, began to be shaken: and it experienced numberless assaults and convulsions, till it was finally divided into the eastern and western empires. The luxury and wealth which had enervated their possessors, and destroyed the heroism and intrepidity by which their ancestors had been distinguished, presented the most powerful temptations to the lawless bands which, driven from the sterile regions of the north of Europe, had pressed forward to seek for new and more favoured habitations. The feeble attempts to turn aside, by bribery, these ferocious barbarians increased the danger which they were intended to remove; and the history of Europe presents, for several ages, the disgusting spectacle of war, conducted with an atrocity eclipsing the stern virtues which sometimes were strikingly displayed. But although the insubordination of this turbulent and sanguinary period was little favourable to the mild influence of genuine Christianity, it did not prove so fatal to it as might have been apprehended; and it was even instrumental in extending its nominal dominion. Mankind, when scarcely emerged from barbarism, and attached to no particular country, but seeking wherever it can be found the food necessary for themselves and the flocks upon which they in a great measure depend, although they entertain those sentiments with regard to religion which seem almost interwoven with our nature, feel little attachment to any one system of superstition, and are open to the reception of new doctrines, which an association with what they value may have led them to venerate. When, accordingly, the tribes which finally overran the Roman empire had ceased from the destructive contests by which they got possession of the regions that had long been blessed with civilization and enlightened by science, they surveyed with amazement and with admiration the people whom they had conquered; they were delighted with the luxuries which abounded among them; they were charmed with their manners and customs; and they eagerly conformed to institutions from which they hoped that they should reap what the original inhabitants of their settlement had enjoyed. The religion of the vanquished they contemplated with reverence; they connected it with the wealth, the refinement, and the power which they saw spread around them; and they easily exchanged the rude and careless worship of their native deities, for the polished and splendid devotional rites, which, with the most imposing solemnity, were celebrated by the Christians. Hence, they soon embraced the religion by which it was believed that these rites were prescribed; and they communicated it to the nations with whom they still maintained an alliance. There is no doubt that motives very little connected with the conviction of the understanding led to the progress of Christianity now described; and, in fact, that progress was occasioned by causes so different from those which should have produced it, that, had circumstances been changed, and had the religion of Jesus been continued to be persecuted by the most powerful states, multitudes who affected to revere it would, upon the same ground on which their veneration rested, have exerted themselves to deride its tenets, and to exterminate its professors.

These subjects are discussed under the articles assigned to them; as also the INTERNAL EVIDENCE of the truth of Christianity, which arises from the excellence and beneficial tendency of its doctrines. Of its just and sublime conceptions and exhibitions of the divine character; of the truth of that view of the moral state of man upon which its disciplinary treatment is founded; of the correspondence that there is between its views of man’s mixed relation to God as a sinful creature, and yet pitied and cared for, and that actual mixture of good and evil, penalty and forbearance, which the condition of the world presents; of the connection of its doctrine of atonement with hope; of the adaptation of its doctrine of divine influence to the moral condition of mankind when rightly understood, and the affecting benevolence and condescension which it implies; and of its noble and sanctifying revelations of the blessedness of a future life, much might be said:--they are subjects indeed on which volumes have been written, and they can never be exhausted. But we confine ourselves to the MORAL TENDENCY, and the consequent BENEFICIAL INFLUENCE, of Christianity. No where except in the Scriptures have we a perfect system of morals; and the deficiencies of Pagan morality only exalt the purity, the comprehensiveness, the practicability of ours. The character of the Being acknowledged as supreme must always impress itself upon moral feeling and practice; the obligation of which rests upon his will. The God of the Bible is “holy,” without spot; “just,” without partiality; “good,” boundlessly benevolent and beneficent; and his law is the image of himself, “holy, just, and good.” These great moral qualities are not made known to us merely in the abstract, so as to be comparatively feeble in their influence: but in the person of Christ, our God, incarnate, they are seen exemplified in action, displaying themselves amidst human relations, and the actual circumstances of human life. With Pagans the authority of moral rules was either the opinion of the wise, or the tradition of the ancient, confirmed, it is true, in some degree, by observation and experience; but to us, they are given as commands immediately issuing from the supreme Governor, and ratified as his by the most solemn and explicit attestations. With them many great moral principles, being indistinctly apprehended, were matters of doubt and debate; to us, the explicit manner in which they are given excludes both: for it cannot be questioned, whether we are commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves; to do to others as we would that they should do to us, a precept which comprehends almost all relative morality in one plain principle; to forgive our enemies; to love all mankind; to live righteously and soberly, as well as godly; that magistrates must be a terror only to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well; that subjects are to render honour to whom honour, and tribute to whom tribute, is due; that masters are to be just and merciful, and servants faithful and obedient. These, and many other familiar precepts, are too explicit to be mistaken, and too authoritative to be disputed; two of the most powerful means of rendering law effectual. Those who never enjoyed the benefit of revelation, never conceived justly and comprehensively of that moral state of the heart from which right and beneficent conduct alone can flow; and therefore when they speak of the same virtues as those enjoined by Christianity, they are to be understood as attaching to them a lower idea. In this the infinite superiority of Christianity displays itself. The principle of obedience is not only a sense of duty to God, and the fear of his displeasure; but a tender love, excited by his infinite compassions to us in the gift of his Son, which shrinks from offending. To this influential motive as a _reason_ of obedience, is added another, drawn from its _end_: one not less influential, but which Heathen moralists never knew,--the testimony that we please God, manifested in the acceptance of our prayers, and in spiritual and felicitous communion with him. By Christianity, impurity of thought and desire is restrained in an equal degree as are their overt acts in the lips and conduct. Humanity, meekness, gentleness, placability, disinterestedness, and charity are all as clearly and solemnly enjoined as the grosser vices are prohibited; and on the unruly tongue itself is impressed “the law of kindness.” Nor are the injunctions feeble; they are strictly LAW, and not mere advice and recommendations: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord;” and thus our entrance into heaven, and our escape from perdition, are made to depend upon this preparation of mind. To all this is added possibility, nay certainty, of attainment, if we use the appointed means. A Pagan could draw, though not with lines so perfect, a _beau ideal_ of virtue, which he never thought attainable; but the “full assurance of hope” is given by the religion of Christ to all who are seeking the moral renovation of their nature; because “it is God that worketh in us to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

But it was not the secular arm alone that was stretched forth to lead men to the reception of Christianity. The church, after it had been firmly established, and had, amidst the riches and honours with which it was endowed, forgotten that it should not have been of this world, conceived it incumbent, as an evidence of its zeal, or, as was too often the case, for extending its power and its influence, to make attempts to substitute the cross of Christ for the emblems of Paganism. In accomplishing this object, it employed different means. But although the conversions which took place, from the establishment of Christianity till the restoration of learning, or the reformation, which forms a new æra in the dissemination of the Gospel, were often unfortunately very far from planting the word of life in the hearts of those to whom it was conveyed, they were very extensive. They reached to almost every country in Europe; to Arabia, China, Judea, and many other parts of Asia; and the obscure tribes, to whom no missionaries were despatched, gradually conformed to the religion of those more powerful states upon which they depended, or to which they looked with respect or veneration.

When such is the moral nature of Christianity, how obvious is it that its tendency both as to individuals and to society must be in the highest sense beneficial! From every passion which wastes, and burns, and frets, and enfeebles the spirit, the individual is set free, and his inward peace renders his obedience cheerful and voluntary: and we might appeal to infidels themselves, whether, if the moral principles of the Gospel were wrought into the hearts, and embodied in the conduct, of all men, the world would not be happy; whether if governments ruled, and subjects obeyed, by the laws of Christ; whether if the rules of strict justice which are enjoined upon us regulated all the transactions of men, and all that mercy to the distressed which we are taught to feel and to practise came into operation; and whether, if the precepts which delineate and enforce the duties of husbands, wives, masters, servants, parents, children, did, in fact, fully and generally govern all these relations,--whether a better age than that called _golden_ by the poets, would not then be realized, and Virgil’s _Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna_, [Now Astraea returns, and the Saturnian reign,] be far too weak to express the mighty change? [It was in the reign of Saturn that the Heathen poets fixed the golden age. At that period, according to them, Astraea, (the goddess of justice,) and many other deities lived on earth; but being offended with the wickedness of men, they successively fled to heaven. Astraea staid longest, but at last retired to her native seat, and was translated into the sign Virgo, next to Libra, who holds her balance. Such is the tendency of Christianity. On immense numbers of individuals it has superinduced these moral changes; all nations, where it has been fully and faithfully exhibited, bear, amidst their remaining vices, the impress of its hallowing and benevolent influence: it is now in active exertion in many of the darkest and worst parts of the earth, to convey the same blessings; and he who would arrest its progress, were he able, would quench the only hope which remains to our world, and prove himself an enemy, not only to himself, but to all mankind. What then, we ask, does all this prove, but that the Scriptures are worthy of God, and propose the very ends which rendered a revelation necessary? Of the whole system of practical religion which it contains we may say, as of that which is embodied in our Lord’s sermon on the mount, in the words of one, who, in a course of sermons on that divine composition, has entered most deeply into its spirit, and presented a most instructive delineation of the character which it was intended to form: “Behold Christianity in its native form, as delivered by its great Author. See a picture of God, as far as he is imitable by man, drawn by God’s own hand. What beauty appears in the whole! How just a symmetry! What exact proportion in every part! How desirable is the happiness here described! How venerable, how lovely is the holiness!” “If,” says Bishop Taylor, “wisdom, and mercy, and justice, and simplicity, and holiness, and purity, and meekness, and contentedness, and charity, be images of God, and rays of divinity, then that doctrine, in which all these shine so gloriously, and in which nothing else is ingredient, must needs be from God. If the holy Jesus had come into the world with less splendour of power and mighty demonstrations, yet the excellency of what he taught makes him alone fit to be the Master of the world;” and agreeable to all this, has been its actual influence upon mankind. Although, says Bishop Porteus, Christianity has not always been so well understood, or so honestly practised, as it ought to have been; although its spirit has been often mistaken, and its precepts misapplied, yet, under all these disadvantages, it has gradually produced a visible change in those points which most materially concern the peace and quiet of the world. Its beneficent spirit has spread itself through all the different relations and modifications of life, and communicated its kindly influence to almost every public and private concern of mankind. It has insensibly worked itself into the inmost frame and constitution of civil states. It has given a tinge to the complexion of their governments, to the temper and administration of their laws. It has restrained the spirit of the prince, and the madness of the people. It has softened the rigours of despotism, and tamed the insolence of conquest. It has, in some degree, taken away the edge of the sword, and thrown even over the horrors of war a veil of mercy. It has descended into families; has diminished the pressure of private tyranny; improved every domestic endearment; given tenderness to the parent, humanity to the master, respect to superiors, to inferiors ease; so that mankind are, upon the whole, even in a temporal view, under infinite obligations to the mild and pacific temper of the Gospel, and have reaped from it more substantial worldly benefits than from any other institution upon earth. As one proof of this, among many others, consider only the shocking carnage made in the human species by the exposure of infants, the gladiatorial shows, which sometimes cost Rome twenty or thirty lives in a month; and the exceedingly cruel usage of slaves allowed and practised by the ancient Pagans. These were not the accidental and temporary excesses of a sudden fury, but were legal and established, and constant methods of murdering and tormenting mankind. Had Christianity done nothing more than brought into disuse, as it confessedly has done, the two former of these inhuman customs entirely, and the latter to a very great degree, it has justly merited the title of the benevolent religion. But this is far from being all. Throughout the more enlightened parts of Christendom there prevails a gentleness of manners widely different from the ferocity of the most civilized nations of antiquity; and that liberality with which every species of distress is relieved, is a virtue peculiar to the Christian name. But we may ask farther, What success has it had on the mind of man, as it respects his eternal welfare? How many thousands have felt its power, rejoiced in its benign influence, and under its dictates been constrained to devote themselves to the glory and praise of God! Burdened with guilt, incapable of finding relief from human resources, the mind has here found peace unspeakable in beholding that sacrifice which alone could atone for transgression. Here the hard and impenitent heart has been softened, the impetuous passions restrained, the ferocious temper subdued, powerful prejudices conquered, ignorance dispelled, and the obstacles to real happiness removed. Here the Christian, looking round on the glories and blandishments of this world, has been enabled, with a noble contempt, to despise all. Here death itself, the king of terrors, has lost his sting; and the soul, with a holy magnanimity, has borne up in the agonies of a dying hour, and sweetly sung itself away to everlasting bliss. In respect to its future spread, we have reason to believe that all nations shall feel its happy effects. The prophecies are pregnant with matter as to this belief. It seems that not only a nation, or a country, but the whole habitable globe, shall become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ. And who is there that has ever known the excellency of this system; who is there that has ever experienced its happy efficacy; who is there that has ever been convinced of its divine origin, its delightful nature and peaceful tendency, but must join the benevolent and royal poet in saying, “Let the whole earth be filled with its glory? Amen and amen!”

Mohammedanism, however, arrested the progress of Christianity in some of these countries, and humbled it and oppressed it in others; but since the reformation, and especially within the last century, it has been extended, not so much by conquest, as by the legitimate means of colonization, and by missions and education, to the most distant and important parts of the world, to China, India, Africa, the American Islands, and those of the Pacific Ocean. The zeal, self-denial, and successes, of those missionaries, who have been sent forth within a few years by various Protestant societies, and their great successes form, indeed, a splendid section in the modern history of the church. They have sown the seed in almost every land, and the fruit has spread itself throughout the world.

Among the collateral proofs of the truth and divine origin of Christianity, its rapid and wonderful success justly holds an important place. Of its early triumphs, the history of the Acts of the Apostles is a splendid record; and in process of time it made a wonderful progress through Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the third century there were Christians in the camp, in the senate, and in the palace; in short, every where, as we are informed, except in the temples and the theatres: they filled the towns, the country, and the islands. Men and women of all ages and ranks, and even those of the first dignity, embraced the Christian faith; insomuch that the Pagans complained that the revenues of their temples were ruined. They were in such great numbers in the empire, that, as Tertullian expresses it, if they had retired into another country, they would have left the Romans only a frightful solitude. (See the next article.) For the illustration of this argument, we may observe, that the Christian religion was introduced every where in opposition to the sword of the magistrate, the craft and interest of the priests, the pride of the philosophers, the passions and prejudices of the people, all closely combined in support of the national worship, and to crush the Christian faith, which aimed at the subversion of Heathenism and idolatry. Moreover, this religion was not propagated in the dark, by persons who tacitly endeavoured to deceive the credulous; nor delivered out by little and little, so that one doctrine might prepare the way for the reception of another; but it was fully and without disguise laid before men all at once, that they might judge of the whole under one view. Consequently mankind were not deluded into the belief of it, but received it upon proper examination and conviction. Beside, the Gospel was first preached and first believed by multitudes in Judea, where Jesus exercised his ministry, and where every individual had the means of knowing whether the things that were told him were matters of fact; and in this country, the scene of the principal transactions on which its credibility depended, the history of Christ could never have been received, unless it had been true, and known to all as truth. Again: the doctrine and history of Jesus were preached and believed in the most noted countries and cities of the world, in the very age when he is said to have lived. On the fiftieth day after our Lord’s crucifixion, three thousand persons were converted in Jerusalem by a single sermon of the Apostles; and a few weeks after this, five thousand who believed were present at another sermon preached also in Jerusalem, Acts ii, 41; iv, 4; vi, 7; viii, 1; ix, 1, 20. About eight or ten years after our Lord’s death, the disciples were become so numerous at Jerusalem and in the adjacent country, that they were objects of jealousy and alarm to Herod himself, Acts xii, 1. In the twenty-second year after the crucifixion, the disciples in Judea are said to have been many myriads, Acts xxi, 20. The age in which Christianity was introduced and received, was famous for men whose faculties were improved by the most perfect state of social life, but who were good judges of the evidence offered in support of the facts recorded in the Gospel history. For it should be recollected, that the success of the Gospel was not restricted to Judea; but it was preached in all the different provinces of the Roman empire. The first triumphs of Christianity were in the heart of Greece itself, the nursery of learning and the polite arts; for churches were planted at a very early period at Corinth, Ephesus, Beræa, Thessalonica, and Philippi. Even Rome herself, the seat of wealth and empire, was not able to resist the force of truth at a time when the facts related were recent, and when they might, if they had been false, have easily been disproved. From Greece and Rome, at a period of cultivation and refinement, of general peace, and extensive intercourse, when one great empire united different nations and distant people, the confutation of these facts would very soon have passed from one country to another, to the utter confusion of the persons who endeavoured to propagate the belief of them. Nor ought it to be forgotten that the religion to which such numbers were proselyted, was an exclusive one. It denied, without reserve, the truth of every article of Heathen mythology, and the existence of every object of their worship. It accepted no compromise; it admitted of no comprehension. If it prevailed at all, it must prevail by the overthrow of every statue, altar, and temple in the world. It pronounced all other gods to be false, and all other worship vain. These are considerations which must have strengthened the opposition to it; augmented the hostility which it must encounter; and enhanced the difficulty of gaining proselytes: and more especially when we recollect, that among the converts to Christianity in the earliest age, a number of persons remarkable for their station, office, genius, education, and fortune, and who were personally interested by their emoluments and honours in either Judaism or Heathenism, appeared among the Christian proselytes. Its evidences approved themselves, not only to the multitude, but to men of the most refined sense and most distinguished abilities; and it dissolved the attachments which all powerful interest and authority created and upheld. Among the proselytes to Christianity we find Nicodemus, and Joseph of Arimathea, members of the senate of Israel; Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue; Zaccheus, the chief of the publicans at Jericho; Apollos, distinguished for eloquence; Paul, learned in the Jewish law; Sergius Paulus, governor of the island of Cyprus; Cornelius, a Roman captain; Dionysius, a judge and senator of the Athenian areopagus; Erastus, treasurer of Corinth; Tyrannus, a teacher of grammar and rhetoric at Corinth; Publius, governor of Malta; Philemon, a person of considerable rank at Colosse; Simon, a noted sophist in Samaria; Zenas, a lawyer; and even the domestics of the emperor himself. These are noticed in the sacred writings; and the Heathen historians also mention some persons of great note who were converted at an early period. To all the preceding circumstances we may add a consideration of peculiar moment, which is, that the profession of Christianity led all, without exception, to renounce the pleasures and honours of the world, and to expose themselves to the most ignominious sufferings. And now, without adding any more to this argument, we may ask, How could the Christian religion have thus prevailed had it not been introduced by the power of God and of truth? And it has been supported in the world by the same power through a course of many ages, amidst the treachery of its friends, the opposition of its enemies, the dangers of prosperous periods, and the persecutions and violence of adverse circumstances; all which must have destroyed it, if it had not been founded in truth, and guarded by the protection of an almighty Providence.