mankind, the whole land of Palestine, the lesser Asia, the chief cities of Syria, and the adjacent countries; the coast of Africa, the polished lands of Greece, and even the mistress of the world herself, had bent before a power more mighty than their own. The pagan annalists of those times, lament the decay of their own unhallowed rites. They complain that the Christians were found dispersed in numbers through all the land; that they abounded in their cities and their towns; in the crowded resorts of man, and the retirement and solitude of the mountain and the forest; that they were of all ages, ranks, and conditions; that they numbered amongst their brethren, not the poor and ignorant alone, but the wealthy and powerful upon earth. They bewail, in consequence, the desertion of the temples, the neglect of the sacred solemnities, and the falling off of the market in which victims were sold for their sacrifices.

Much more might be said on this pleasing and interesting subject. The records of antiquity which refer to the extraordinary growth of Christianity, are abundant and decisive. But enough has been advanced to illustrate our Saviour's parable, and to shew how close a likeness the picture was of the reality. The tree, when it has reached its largest growth, when its branches are spread over the plains, when it affords shelter

and shade to those, whose slightest effort might, but for God's protecting care, have crushed its infant blossoming to dust, is well chosen to shadow forth the wonderful increase of our holy faith, through the fostering culture of the same Almighty hand. When the blessed seed of Christianity was first scattered upon the soil, men mocked at the sower and the grain; can any thing good come out of Nazareth, was the senseless and insulting cry? But the good work went on, and through evil report and good report, through wounds, and persecutions, and death, did the first glorious labourers in the vineyard spread the germs of righteousness abroad. God shed the sunbeams of his favour, the dews of his blessing, upon the sacred plant. He guarded its earliest growth with his almighty hand; he suffered neither the beasts of the field to devour it, nor the wild boar of the forest to root it up. It flourished under his watchful protection; the thorns, and brambles, and noxious herbage, which had striven to choke and stifle it by their unholy growth, withered away and perished beneath its shade. It grew on and on, my brethren; centuries rolled away, and still that beauteous tree grew on. For a time, indeed, a long and dreary interval, a blighting mildew hung upon its branches, and fed upon its vigour and its strength. The verdure and the freshness of its leaves de

And

cayed; a false and unnatural hue sat upon its foliage, and obscured the brightness of its natural beauty. For man had deemed, in his impiety, that he could improve the glorious culture; he fancied that he could engraft other scions, which sprung from stocks of merely earthly lineage, upon that tree of heaven, which God's own hand had planted. He did engraft, he dared to pollute this tree of life, with branches which he had plucked from his own wilderness of weeds. when these accursed shoots sprung forth: when they shot their unsightly luxuriance to the sky, or twined, like some blighting serpent, round the trunk which fed their worthless growth, he tended and fostered them with the most anxious care. The rain from heaven fell not indeed, the light from heaven beamed not upon their poisonous leaves but man hoped to remedy this deficiency, and he refreshed them with waters from an earthly fountain, and warmed them with the glow of an earthly fire.

But though God, for his punishment, permitted this unholy work to flourish for a season; though the plant of heaven seemed blighted, and its pride and beauty obscured; yet it was but a temporary withering. Some shoots there were, that struggled against the parasites, which wound their deadly folds around their stems, and fed upon their strength and life. On these blessed

branches, the God of mercy shed his drops of fatness, and gave them strength to shake off the poisonous excrescencies, by which they had been oppressed. The tree revived again, and though some fair and goodly boughs are still bent down by this rank and unseemly herbage; yet the time will come, it may be near at hand, when it will again stand forth, and dispense health and shelter to all the plains around. To drop the metaphor; the religion of Jesus which seemed so feeble at its first establishment, has now become the prevailing creed of all the civilized parts of the earth. Regions which the feet of the first apostles never trod, of which neither themselves nor their countrymen had ever heard, bow before the name of him who died on Calvary.

But whilst the sincere believer finds much to console and gladden his heart, in the contemplation of this wonderful propagation of Christianity; the infidel attacks its truth, because it has not been more rapid and universal in its increase. If, he exclaims, your religion be really true, if it does indeed proceed from God, and is calculated to promote the happiness of man, why are so many nations ignorant even of its existence ? The question is an insidious one, and seems at first sight to carry a difficulty. But if we compare the issue, in this case, with the operations of God's providence in his other dealings with

now are.

his creatures, we shall find the same result occurring in all. When the sceptic proposes to us a question similar to the above, we may fairly retaliate, and ask in turn, how it happens, that the Deity has established such an astonishing difference between these nations of our earth? Why the blessings of civilization and refinement, with the various arts and elegancies of life, should be bestowed upon some, whilst others are left to the most hideous superstition and the darkest barbarity? We ourselves were not always what we When the Roman legions first invaded our island, they were struck by the painted bodies and savage manners of our ancestors. Our present frame of society has been produced by slow and almost imperceptible gradations. And such is the case with every material change which takes place in the world. We have no reason, then, to expect that the progress of religious knowledge would be regulated by different principles. Without indeed some standing miracle, by which its truth and divine origin might be constantly attested, it must be left to make its way gradually and slowly. We know, however, that a time will come, when the tree of the gospel, thus sown in obscurity and danger-thus limited in its early growth-thus assailed as it is in these our days, will spread its branches over every nation of the earth. To this bright and