heathen world, this exalted idea should have a place, how much more might we expect to find it in the revelation of the true God, to which it must be traced?

We could illustrate other doctrines by similar analogies, did time permit. If these analogies were merely partial or accidental, they would be less important. But they are not casual; as must be known to every man who is versed in the Holy Scriptures and in Oriental Mythology. They are general and systematic. Was it ever alleged that the Light of Nature could teach such doctrines as these? They are all beyond the Light of Nature.

These, my brethren, are doctrines which exist in this day, in the midst of the idolatry and moral corruption of the heathen world. Every where there appears to be a counterfeit of the true doctrine. The inha

bitants have lost sight of the only true God, and they apply these doctrines to their false gods. But these doctrines are relics of the first Faith of the earth. They are, as you see, the strong characters of God's primary revelation to man, which neither the power of man, nor time itself, hath been able to destroy; but which have endured from age to age, like the works of nature, the moon and stars, which God hath created incorruptible.

3. Another circumstance, illustrating the truth of the Christian religion in the East, is the state of the Jews. The Jews are scattered over the whole face of the East, and the fulfilment of the prophecies concerning them is far more evident in these regions, than it is here among Christian nations.

The last great punishment of the

Jewish people was inflicted for their last great crime-their shedding the blood of the Son of God! And this instance of divine indignation has been exhibited to all nations; and all nations seem to have been employed by the appointment of God in inflicting the punishment.

By express prophecy, the Jews were sentenced to become "the scorn and

reproach of all people;" and " a pro"verb and bye-word among all nations." Now, that their stubborn unbelief should be a reproach to them amongst Christian nations here in the West, is not so strange; that they should be a proverb and a bye-word among those who had heard the prophecy concerning them, is not so remarkable. But to have seen them (as I have seen them) insulted and persecuted by the ignorant nations in the East; in the very words of prophecy, "trodden down of the heathen ;"

trodden down by a people who never heard the name of Christ; who never heard that the Jews had rejected Christ; and who, in fact, punished the Jews, without knowing their crime; this, I say, hath appeared to me an awful completion of the divine sentence.

4. Another monument of the Christian religion in the East is the state of the Syrian Christians, subsisting, for many ages, a separate and distinct people, in the midst of the corruption and idolatry of the heathen world. They exist in the very midst of India, like the bush of Moses, burning and not consumed; surrounded by the enemies of their faith, and subject to their power, and yet not destroyed. There they exist, having the pure word of God in their hands, and speaking in their churches that same language which our Saviour himself spake in the streets of Jerusalem.

We may contemplate the history of this people, existing so long in that dark region, as a type of the inextinguishable Light of Christ's religion; and, in this sense, it may be truly said, "We have seen "his Star in the East."

The probable design of the Divine Providence, in preserving this people, appears to be this; That they should be a seed of the Church in Asia: that they should be a special instrument for the conversion of the surrounding heathen, when God's appointed time is come; a people prepared for his service, as fellow-labourers with us; a people, in short, in the midst of Asia, to whom we can point as an irrefragable evidence, of the truth and antiquity of the Christian Faith.*

* The manuscripts in the Syriac language, which were found amongst the Syrian Christians, are now deposited in the public library of the University of Cambridge. They are twenty-five in number, and consist chiefly of

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