of which it would be impossible to overlook the importance, or elude the force; which required no sober calculation to estimate, no laborious inquiry to discover; which met and confronted them wherever they went, and which, either in desperate presumption, or deliberate reliance on their own preternatural powers, they must have contemned and defied.

"The commencement of their labors was usually disheartening, and ill-calculated to keep alive the flame of ungrounded enthusiasm. They begin their operations in the narrow and secluded synagogue of their own countrymen. The novelty of their doctrine, and curiosity, secure them at first a patient attention; but as the more offensive tenets are developed, the most fierce and violent passions are awakened. Scorn and hatred are seen working in the clouded brows and agitated countenances of the leaders: if here and there one is pricked to the heart, it requires considerable moral courage to acknowledge his conviction; and the new teachers are either cast forth from the indignant assembly of their own people, liable to all the punishments which they are permitted to inflict, scourged and beaten; or, if they succeed in forming a party, they give rise to a furious schism; and thus appear before the heathen with the dangerous notoriety of having caused a violent tumult, and broken the public peace by their turbulent and contentious harangues: at all events, disclaimed by that very people on whose traditions they profess to build their doctrines, and to whose Scriptures they appeal in justification of their pretensions. They endure, they persevere, they continue to sustain the contest against Judaism and paganism. It is still their deliberate, ostensible, and avowed object to overthrow all this vast system of idolatry; to tear up by the roots all ancient prejudices; to silence shrines, sanctified by the veneration of ages as oracular; to

consign all those gorgeous temples to decay, and all those images to contempt; to wean the people from every barbarous and dissolute amusement."

"But in one respect it is impossible now to conceive the extent, to which the apostles of the crucified Jesus shocked all the feelings of mankind. The public establishment of Christianity, the adoration of ages, the reverence of nations, has thrown around the cross of Christ an indelible and inalienable sanctity. No effort of the imagination can dissipate the illusion of dignity which has gathered round it; it has been so long dissevered from all its coarse and humiliating associa tions, that it cannot be cast back and desecrated into its state of opprobrium and contempt. To the most daring unbeliever among ourselves, it is the symbol, the absurd, and irrrational, he may conceive, but still the ancient and venerable symbol, of a powerful and influential religion: what was it to the Jew and to the heathen? the basest, the most degrading punishment of the lowest criminal! the proverbial terror of the wretched slave! it was to them, what the most despicable and revolting instrument of public execution is to us. Yet to the cross of Christ, men turned from deities in which were embodied every attribute of strength, power, and dignity; in an incredibly short space of time multitudes gave up the splendor, the pride, and the power of paganism, to adore a Being who was thus humiliated beneath the meanest of mankind, who had become, according to the literal interpretation of the prophecy, a very scorn of men, and an outcast of the people.” -MILMAN'S Bampton Lectures, Lect. vi. p. 279.

[K]. Part II. Chap. ii. § 4. p. 235.

"Such is our yoke and our burden! Let him, who has thought it too hard and too heavy to bear, be prepared to state it boldly when he shall appear side by side with the poor and mistaken Indian before the throne of God at the day of judg ment. The poor heathen may come forward with his wounded limbs and weltering body, saying, I thought thee an austere master, delighting in the miseries of thy creatures, and I have accordingly brought thee the torn remnants of a body which I have tortured in thy service.' And the Christian will come forward, and say, I knew that thou didst die to save me from such sufferings and torments, and that thou only commandedst me to keep my body in temperance, soberness, and chastity, and I thought it too hard for me; and I have accordingly brought thee the refuse and sweepings of a body that has been corrupted and brutalized in the service of profligacy and drunkenness, even the body which thou didst declare should be the temple of thy Holy Spirit.' The poor Indian will, perhaps, show his hands, reeking with the blood of his children, saying, I thought this was the sacrifice with which God was well-pleased:' and you, the Christian, will come forward with blood upon thy hands also, I knew that thou gavest thy Son for my sacrifice, and commandedst me to lead my offspring in the way of everlasting life; but the command was too hard for me, to teach them thy statutes and to set them my humble example: I have let them go the broad way to destruction, and their blood is upon my hand— and my heart and my head.' The Indian will come forward, and say, 'Behold, I am come from the wood, the desert, and the wilderness, where I fled from the cheerful society of my fellow-mortals, because I thought it was pleasing in thy

sight.' And the Christian will come forward, and say, Behold, I come from my comfortable home and the communion of my brethren, which thou hast graciously permitted me to enjoy; but I thought it too hard to give them a share of those blessings which thou hast bestowed upon me; I thought it too hard to give them a portion of my time, my trouble, my fortune, or my interest; I thought it too hard to keep my tongue from cursing and reviling, my heart from hatred, and my hand from violence and revenge.' What will be the answer of the Judge to the poor Indian none can presume to say. That he was sadly mistaken in the means of salvation, and that what he had done could never purchase him everlasting life, is beyond a doubt; but yet the Judge may say, 'Come unto me, thou heavy-laden, and I will give thee the rest which thou couldst not purchase for thyself.' But, to the Christian, 'Thou, who hadst my easy yoke, and my light burden; thou, for whom all was already purchased: 'Thank God! it is not yet pronounced: - begone! and fly for thy life!"— WOLFE'S Sermons (Remains), Sermon X. pp. 371-373.

Suppose it was suddenly revealed to any one among you that he, and he alone of all that walk upon the face of this earth, was destined to receive the benefit of his Redeemer's atonement, and that all the rest of mankind was lost-and lost to all eternity; it is hard to say what would be the first sensation excited in that man's mind by the intelligence. It is indeed probable it would be joy to think that all his fears respecting his eternal destiny were now no more; that all the forebodings of the mind and misgivings of the heart - all the solemn stir which we feel rising within us whenever we look forward to a dark futurity, to feel that all these had now subsided forever,to know that he shall stand in the everlasting sunshine of the love of God! It is perhaps impossible

:

that all this should not call forth an immediate feeling of delight but if you wish the sensation to continue, you must go to the wilderness; you must beware how you come within sight of a human being, or within sound of a human voice; you must recollect that you are now alone upon the earth; or, if you want society, you had better look for it among the beasts of the field than among the ruined species to which you be long; unless indeed the Almighty, in pity to your desolation, should send his angels before the appointed time, that you might learn to forget in their society the outcast objects of your former sympathies. But to go abroad into human society, to walk amongst Beings who are now no longer your fellow-creatures, to feel the charity of your common nature rising in your heart, and have to crush it within you like a sin,

to reach forth your hand to perform one of the common kindnesses of humanity, and to find it withered by the recollection, that however you may mitigate a present pang, the everlasting pang is irreversible; to turn away in despair from these children whom you have now come to bless and to save (we hope and trust both here and forever!)—perhaps it would be too much for you; at all events, it would be hard to state a degree of exertion within the utmost range of human energy, or a degree of pain within the farthest limit of human endurance, to which you would not submit, that you might have one companion on your lonely way from this world to the mansions of happiness. But suppose, at that moment, that the angel who brought the first intelligence returns to tell you that there are Beings upon this earth who may yet be saved, that he was before mistaken, no matter how, perhaps he was your guardian angel, and darted from the throne of grace with the intelligence of your salvation without waiting to hear the fate of the rest of mankind,—no matter how,