And here it was natural to expect, that in making this choice he should look to men of influence, authority, and weight; that being himself destitute of all the advantages of rank, power, wealth, and learning, he should endeavour to compensate for those defects in his own person by the contrary qualities of his associates, by connecting himself with some of the most powerful, most opulent, most learned, and most eloquent men of his time.

A

And this most undoubtedly would have been his mode of proceeding, had his object been to establish his religion by mere human means, by influence or by force, by the charms of eloquence, by the powers of reason, by the example, by the authority, by the fashion of the great. But these were not the instruments which Christ meant to make use of. He meant to show that he was above them all; that he had far other resources, far different auxiliaries, to call in to his support, in comparison of which all the wealth and magnificence, and power and wisdom of the world, were trivial and contemptible things. We find therefore that not the wise, not the mighty, not the noble were called* to co-operate with him; but men of the meanest birth, of the lowest occupations, of the humblest talents, and most uncultivated minds. "As he was walking by the sea of Galilee, St. Matthew tells us, he saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men; and they straightway left their nets (that is in fact all their subsistence, all the little property they had in the world) and followed him. And going from thence he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebudee and John his brother, in a ship with Zebudee their father mending their nets; and he called them, and they immediately left the ship, and their father, and followed him," These were the men whom he selected for his companions and assistants. These fishermen of Galilee were to be, under him, the instru

ments of over-throwing the stupendous and magnificent system of paganism and idolatry throughout the world, and producing the greatest change, the most general and most important revolution in principles, in morals, and in religion, that ever took place on this globe. For this astonishing work, these simple, illiterate, humble men, were singled out by our Lord. He chose, as the apostle expresses it, "the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; that his religion might not be established by the enticing words of man's wisdom, but by demonstration of the spirit and of power; that our faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God."+

Such were the associates chosen by him, who was the delegate of heaven, and whose help was from above. We may expect therefore that an impostor, who meant to rely on human means for success, would take a directly contrary course. And this we find in fact to be

the case.

Who were the companions and assistants selected by the grand impostor Mahomet? They were men of the most weight and authority, and rank and influence, among his countrymen. The reason is obvious; he wanted such supports; Christ did not; and hence the marked difference of their conduct in this instance. It is the natural difference between truth and imposture. That the power of God and not of man was the foundation on which our Lord meant to erect his new system, very soon appeared; for the next thing we hear of him is, that he "went about all Galilee teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing sll manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."

Here then began that DEMONSTRATION OF THE SPIRIT AND OF POWER, which was to be the grand basis of his new kingdom, the great evidence of his heavenly mission. It is indeed probable that the wis dom and the authority with which he spake, and the

* 1 Cor. i. 27.

† 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5.

Matth. iv. 23.

weight and importance of the doctrines he taught, would of themselves make a deep impression on the minds of his hearers, and produce him some followers. But had he stopt here, had he given his new disciples nothing but words, their zeal and attachment to him would soon have abated. For it was natural for these converts to say to him, "You have called upon us to repent and to reform; you have commanded us to renounce our vices, to relinquish our favourite pleasures and pursuits, to give up the world and its enjoyments, and to take up our cross and follow you; and in return for this you promise us distinguished happiness and honour in your spiritual kingdom. You spake, it is true, most forcibly to our consciences and to our hearts; and we feel strongly disposed to obey your injunctions, and to credit your promises; but still the sacrifice we are required to make is as a great one, and the conflict we have to go through is a bitter one. We find it a most painful struggle to subdue confirmed habits, and to part at once with all our accustomed pleasures and indulgences. Before then we can entirely relinquish these, and make a complete change in the temper of our souls and the conduct of our lives, we must have some convincing proof that you have a right to require this complaisance at our hands; that what you enjoin us is in reality the command of God himself; that you are actually sent from heaven, and commisioned by him to teach us his will, and to instruct us in our duty; that the kingdom you hold out to us in another world is something more than mere imagination: that you are in short what you pretend to be, the SON OF GOD; and that you are able to make good the punishment you denounce against sin, and the rewards you promise to virtue."

Our Lord well knew that this sort of reasoning must. occur to every man's mind. He knew that it was highly proper and indispensably necessary to give some evidence of his divine commission, to do sOMETHING which should satisfy the world that he was the Son of God, and the delegate of heaven. And how could he

do this so effectually as by performing works which it utterly exceeded all the strength and ability of man to accomplish, and which nothing less than the hand of God himself could possibly bring to pass; In other

words, the proofs he gave of his mission were those astonishing miracles which are recorded in the Gospel, and which are here for the first time mentioned by St. Matthew in the 23d verse of this chapter: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people."

This then is the primary, the fundamental evidence of his divine authority, which our Lord was pleased to give to his followers. His first application, as we have seen, was (like that of his precursor, John the Baptist) to their hearts "REPENT YE," lay aside your vices and your prejudices. Till this was done, till these grand obstacles to the admission of truth were removed, he well knew that all he could say and all he could do would have no effect; they would not be moved either by his exhortations or his miracles, "they would not be persuaded though one rose from the dead." And in fact we find that several of the pharisees, men abandoned to vice and wickedness, did actually resist the miracles of Christ, and the resurrection of a man from the grave; they ascribed his casting out devils to Beelzebub; they were not convinced by the cure of the blind man, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead, though they saw them both before their eyes, one restored to sight, the other to life. This plainly proves how far the power of sin and of prejudice will go in closing up all the avenues of the mind against conviction;. and how wisely our Saviour acted in calling upon hearers to repent, before he offered any evidence to their understanding. But the way being thus cleared, the evidence was then procured, and the effect it had was such as might be expected; for St. Matthew tells us, that his fame went throughout all Syria: and that there

* Luke xvi. 31.

his

followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea, and from beyond Jordan; that is, from every quarter of his own country and the adjoining nations.

And indeed it can be no wonder that such multitudes were convinced and converted by what they saw. The wonder would have been if they had not. To those who were themselves eye-witnesses of his miracles, they must have been (except in a few instances of inveterate depravity of heart) irresistible proofs of his divine mission. When they saw him give eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, health to the sick, and even life to the dead, by speaking only a few words, what other conclusion could they possibly draw than that which the centurion did, truly this was the Son of God. To us indeed who have not seen these mighty works, and who live at the distance of eighteen hundred years from the time when they were wrought, the force of this evidence is undoubtedly less than it was to an eye-witness. But if the reality of these miracles is proved to us by sufficient testimony, by testimony such as no ingenuous and unprejudiced mind can withstand, they ought still to produce in us the firmest belief of the divine power of him who wrought them.‡

It must be admitted at the same time, that these miracles, being facts of a very uncommon and very extraordinary nature, such as have never happened in our own times, and but very seldom even in former times, they require a much stronger degree of testimony to support them than common historical facts. And this degree of testimony they actually have. They are supported by a body of evidence fully adequate to the case; fully competent to outweigh all the disadvantages arising from the great distance and the astonishing nature of the events in question.

1. In the first place, these miracles are recorded in four different histories, written very near the time of

4 Mr. Hume's abstruse and sophistical argument against miracles, has been Completely refuted by Drs. Adams, Campbell, and Paley.