THIRD LECTURE.

Learned Men who have embraced Christianity.

Matthew, ii. 1, 2.

"There came wise men from the East; saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the East and are come to worship him."

It is a beautiful idea of the Ancients, that the most venomous serpents which infest our earth are to be found only in those regions which abound with the most sovereign antidotes to their poison. Whether this be true or untrue in the world of nature, it is a principle which prevades the moral creation. Evil always has its limits. It never can become either perpetual or unrestrained. It sometimes comes to an end from having in itself the elements of self-combustion; and is destroyed by a process resulting from its own nature. At other times, by its encroachments on every thing high

and holy, it awakens a resistance which overpowers and crushes it by the hands of those whom it had aimed to destroy. To both these causes it is perhaps owing, that the triumphs of infidelity have always been short, and that in the end it has met with overthrows so complete and decisive... But friends of the truth who are faithful to every trust, will not allow error to live until it may die out of its own accord, or perish by the laws of its own nature. However short may be its life, the evil fruit which would spring from it, might last forever; and accordingly, as you will see from what we are now to set before you, wherever infidelity has sown its seeds; like the fabled teeth of the dragon, they have started up into armed men; men who could not be impelled to turn their weapons against each other, but men armed in the panoply of truth, to make war in its defence and for its wider dominion.

We cannot be said, in our former Lecture on the subject, to have done injustice to infidelity by an unfair exhibition of the force it can array in its defence. We have not raked up from the kennel the low and debased who are found on its side: nor have we called forth from the dens of pollution, the

scurrilous, noisy and reckless revilers of Christianity, who station themselves under the infidel banner. We have passed by this motley and loathsome host in silence. We have presented to view only the chosen and acknowledged leaders of infidelity, its ablest and most distinguished advocates; and in our view of their learning and their lives, their scepticism and its causes, we have aimed to give them full credit for whatever they may claim, either in learning or in character. But having thus surveyed the strength of those who have set themselves against us, let us now turn to the ranks of the learned, who appear under a different banner and animated by a different spirit. Their banner is the cross, with its motto-"In hoc vinces;" and their spirit, love to the truth and to Him who has revealed it for the salvation of a lost world.

Let me here observe, that in the array of names which I am about to set before you, for the sake of argument, I will not take into the account any of those who have been known as ministers of the Gospel, however they may have been distinguished for their scholarship and learning. And yet let me not be understood to admit, that as a body the

clergy are to be held of small moment to the cause of letters and science. I cannot be accused of undue partiality for my own profession, when I claim, that if the learning of the clergy were to be swept away from the mass of human knowledge, it would leave a chasm, "a great gulf that could not be passed over" for generations to come. Even in that age of the world, when as a Profession, they were far from being what they ought to have been, they were the chief, if not the sole preservers of letters. } "The Dark Ages" but too well deserve the name. But though they were dark, they were not without gleams of light. The darkness was not Egyptian, a blackness that was total and unrelieved. There were stars, if nothing more, in the expanse above us. And it was the clergy, as is held in remembrance by their very name, who kept the light of knowledge from utter extinction in that dreary night of intellect.

Nor are we indebted to them only for the industry with which they preserved the materials of classical learning, both Greek and Roman. Physical science has always been largely a debtor to their labors. Six hundred years ago, or about the middle of

the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon gave to the world his work, which obtained for him the title of

the Wonderful Doctor," in which we find the first movements towards several of those discoveries which have since revolutionized the face of the civilized world. Long before gunpowder was known in the art of war, he foretold "a substance may be prepared which even in very small quantities will produce a loud report in the air, kindle like a train of fire, and be able to destroy whole castles and armies." He was the first to teach that "we may cut or shape glasses so that some of them will enlarge objects, or bring them nearer, and others will di minish or remove them farther; some will make them appear upside down, others right them again." Here you find the germ of the telescope and microscope, which have immeasurably enlarged the limits of knowledge both in the terrestrial and celestial worlds. To mention only one other suggestion of his busy and prolific mind. "It is possible," he declared, "to build ships that might be managed by one man, and surpass in swiftness all ordinary vessels, even if full of rowers. Moreover, a kind of carriage may be constructed, which without being