testant Churches disagree, and that in the evangelical doctrines or essentials of religious faith and practice, there is the most cordial agreement among them. A moment's candid reflection might serve to convince them that the various branches of the Universal Church, are but as so many regiments of a great army whose operations are all tending to the same end. The differences in name, military drill, equipments, etc., of the different departments of the army, as the artillery, cavalry, and infantry, corresponding with the different names, forms of government, discipline, etc., by which the various branches of the Church militant are distinguished, but all having the same object in view, and their somewhat diversified operations, under the superintending providence of God, all tending directly to the same end, namely, the reconciliation of the world to God through a crucified and risen Redeemer. In perfect consistency with their principles also, sceptics and unbelievers generally, seem to take a peculiar pleasure in dwelling upon the imperfections of professing Christians, as being an employment much more congenial to their tastes and inclinations, than the instituting of a diligent and candid inquiry into the evidences of Christianity. For this they have not time. The subject moreover is dry, and the study distasteful. It might also involve some little expense; and they would therefore beg to be excused, or, at least, would beg to defer so distasteful and unimportant an investigation to a more convenient season! Judging from the tenor of some of his remarks relative to public worship, M. Renan doubtless thinks with others of his creed, that Christians who attend Divine Worship, and observe the Sacraments and ordinances of the Church, are no better than other men -no better than those who wholly neglect the observance 66 of such things; but the assertion, although frequently made, is really just as reasonable as to say in reference to another matter, that because spies and traitors are known to exist, therefore there are no true men," and not a whit more so. It is based on the absurd assumption, that because there are hypocrites and mere formalists in the Church-men faithless to their professed principles-Christianity is but a name, and the Church contains none who are really true to their Christian principles and profession; as though it were not an established and self-evident principle, that the presence of the counterfeit in anything but proves the existence of the genuine. Hypocrites there are and will be, for the Bible itself speaks of them; and in some instances so apparently transformed are they for a time, that it is impossible for man to detect the counterfeit. God alone can do this; and although permitted to grow together here, between the wheat and the tares, the true and the false professor, God will, in the proper time, effect a final and everlasting separation. But with regard to the real Christian being no better or more virtuous than the man of the world, it is a position that will not stand the test of reason and experience; inasmuch as the former estimates true virtue from the highest stand-point of morality, and is invariably virtuous from principle, while those of the latter who are practically moral are so from nature or policy, and to the extent, and so long only, as nature or circumstances, or both combined, prompt them to adopt their accommodating standard of virtue, and lead them to the practice of it. Again, besides the manifest superiority of the virtue of the true Christian in this respect, he possesses a still higher degree of virtue equally practical with the other, and of which the man of the world is at all K times wholly destitute. It consists in supreme love to the highest and best of beings, and the consecration of his entire life and being to His service. This is holiness, or virtue of the highest order—a standard of virtue far removed from the low standard of morality which is possible of attainment to the mere man of the world-man in a state of nature. True Christians, then, I affirm, are "better" than those who are not-true believers who have realized. the Gospel to be "the power of God" to the salvation of their souls, are more virtuous, in every sense of the term, than the unbeliever who is "without God and without hope in the world." The moral, religious, and heaven-born effects produced in the hearts and lives of those who "neglect not the assembling of themselves together" for public worship, are notorious and incalculable; and this consideration is of itself an evidence of its Divine origin. But besides the individual effects produced by the public preaching of the Gospel, it produces a general moral influence throughout every community in which public worship is observed, the extent of which for good cannot be fully estimated. M. Renan may well say, then, that the religion of the Gospel, the "pure worship" instituted by Christ, "will never be succeeded by another or a better;" in this he has spoken truly, for the immutable One, who has Himself styled it the "everlasting Gospel," herein utters a prediction-whether Renan recognizes it as such or not—the fulfilment of which shall be demonstrated in the experience of mankind to the end of time. And in view of the purifying, comforting, life-giving influence of God's grace and Spirit, realized in the public "assemblies of His saints," as in all ages past of the Church, so in all ages to come, multitudes will yet accord a heartfelt response to the sentiment of the psalmist, "I was glad when they said, Let us go up to the house of the Lord;" for thereby have we, with the prophet, been enabled to renew our spiritual strength; mount up as upon the wings of an eagle into the regions of pure enjoyment; run the Christian race, and not grow weary; walk the heavenly road, and not faint. CHAPTER VII. MIRACLES. HE possibility of miracle and of a personal Divinity nizes the existence of both. Divine Revelation is itself a miracle, involving a supernatural manifestation of Divine power. But that God has ever manifested Himself to His intelligent creature, man, by supernatural means, M. Renan will not believe, and hence he rejects certain portions of the Gospel records because, he says, "they are full of miracles." A near relation of his (religiously),1 ere he departed this life, was of the same mind, and said : "It is impossible that a Being, infinitely wise, should make laws in order to violate them, He would not derange the machine of His own construction, unless it were for its improvement." This passage betrays an utter ignorance on the part of its author of the moral motives by which the Almighty, as represented in Scripture, is invariably actuated when performing a work which involves an interference with the laws of nature. God's works are alike perfect whatever He does, and in His plan of operations He is as "infinitely wise" in destroying the work of His hands when the time and the end for which it was created are accomplished, as He was in its original creation. If, for instance, a thing exists as long and under such conditions as God originally purposed it should exist, when the time originally decreed 1 Voltaire. |