and distinguished legislators of Greece and Italy, were utterly unable to reform the vices, and correct the superstition, of their fellow-citizens. What was to be expected in a mission which was to concern all mankind, from the efforts of a few weak, illiterate, and despised disciples? How were they to be enabled, if considered as mere men, unassisted by heaven, to conflict with the tenaciousness of the learned, the obstinacy of the bigoted, the zeal of the supertitious, and the ardour of the fanatic? With what arms could they have opposed the darling vices of a corrupt world, and the prescriptive prepossessions of a vile superstition, which were every where to meet and to oppose them, and to subdue, if not subdued? By what means were they to lay the foundations of a universal church, in defiance of the jealousy of the bigoted, the hostility of the learned, and the persecution of the powerful, which were perpetually to obstruct the progress of their work? And may we not infer that the difficulties under which they were to execute the duties of their sublime office, would have speedily suppressed their efforts and their zeal, and averted them from a cause which they were so ill qualified, in faculty and in power, to undertake and to sustain, if they had not been deeply impressed with the celestial authority of the religion they were to preach, and the Master they were to serve?

Under these circumstances they entered upon their mission. What was the result to the preachers themselves? Contempt, persecution, affliction, the glooms of the prison, and, in many instances, the pangs of death. What, ultimately, to their cause? Triumph and glory. In the first instance, those holy men demonstrated their sincerity by their sufferings; in the last, the wisdom which sent them forth by

their success. They were the weak things chosen by Christ to overthrow the mighty; and the mighty were overthrown. They were the foolish things selected to confound the wise; and the wise were confounded. The Gospel, which, in the estimate of short-sighted man, might have been thought to be endangered by the apparent feebleness of its friends, or the unrelenting hostility of its foes, gradually emerged from the obscurity which at first surrounded it, and rose, in fulness of splendor, on the nations. It was, therefore, justly said, that the word of God grew mightily and prevailed; and, thus, a few poor, artless, and ignorant men, scorned by the learned, and persecuted by the powerful, verified the trust reposed in them by their Master, and established a religion such as the corrupted temper of man was most likely to oppose, and such as, in the purity and spirituality of its doctrines, was directly at variance with every creed, save that of the Jews, which had being hitherto embraced by mankind.

Upon the whole, then, we trace in Christ, and in his followers, the virtues which illustrated their pure and holy precepts, the patient and heroic endurance which demonstrated their disinterestedness and their sincerity, and the wisdom and the sancity which never descended to a compromise with the passions and vices of mankind, and seem to have been solicitous only to re-establish the moral order of the world, and restore the dignity of our frail and fallen nature. They would be thought to have been actuated, through the whole of their course, by none of those fears and hopes which govern the conduct of the children of the earth, or of those temporal views which so perpetually distract the wills and the affections of men.

Their character is distinguished,

throughout, by a holy and unparalleled uniformity, by the unvarying and unspotted brightness of consistent excellence. We advert with equal astonishment to the purity of their principles and of their lives; and, circumstanced as they were, we know not from whence, if not from heaven, they derived the knowledge of truths which had been so long hidden from the most applauded sages of the most cultivated ages, or the motives which could nourish and sustain their spirit through the long and voluntary endurance of so many toils and such unmerited sufferings.

CHAPTER XIII.

CONCLUSION.

The evidences, according to Rousseau, of an inspired religion-The principle which he lays down, adopted in the preceding work-Re trospect The internal character of the religions of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of the Koran, and the pretensions of their founders-The defects of both-The Christian dispensation-Not to be rejected because it may involve occasional difficulty, or pretend to issue from miraculous intervention-Its indisputable excellence, as a system of duty, of consolation, and of hope-Worthy of God-Adequate to the religious edification of man-Christ and his disciples-Their utter incompetence, in a human view, to the accomplishment of their object—Their sincerity, their sufferings, and their success, and the inference from all-Objection, from the pretended failure of the religion-Answer-Conclusion.

F, says the most eloquent and acute of sceptics,

IF

any commission for the religious instruction of the world have ever issued from the authority of God, such a commission must include sufficient evi, dences of its high origin, to entitle it to the respect and acceptance of mankind. Of these, the first, the most important, and the most certain, would be found in the nature of the doctrines communicated; that is, in the purity, utility, and holiness, which might authorize us to trace them to the inspiration of divine goodness and divine intelligence. The second, would be impressed on the character of the persons themselves, who had been chosen by God for the communication of his word; and their justice, their sanctity, and their truth; their superiority to all worldly

passions, and designs; the disinterestedness, the grandeur, and the sublimity of their views; their prudence, their self-devotion, their sagacity, and their wisdom; and their adaptation, in all, to the high and paramount duties of their divine vocation, would testify that they were something more than mere men, and that they were guided and illuminated by lights from heaven*.

In the preceding inquiry, I have estimated, by this criterion, the most distinguished religions which have prevailed in the world. I have inquired by what internal evidences they were sustained, by what virtues of their founders they were exemplified or confirmed, and whether, if the review might permit us to infer the necessity of an inspired religion, it might also justify the persuasion that such a religion has been conferred.

In four of these religions, the boast of human sagacity and wisdom, the admitted guides of numerous nations, the fancied and venerated repositories of divine truth, we have discovered little but frailty and absurdity, inconsistency and error. That which was promulgated to instruct, was only to misdirect and deceive the world. That which pretended to the sanction of the Almighty, was only to demonstrate the ignorance, the perversity, and the corruption of

man.

The doctrines of piety, and the precepts of morals, thus announced, were vitiated by almost every defect which could flow from human depravity or folly. Truth was incidental, falsehood and error, the most extravagant and most pernicious, were of perpetual recurrence. Whatever might be the wisdom of the

* Rousseau.