Preliminary Dissertation

The Fitness of the Time Selected by Divine Providence for the Introduction of the Christian Dispensation

The time was long between the promise given to our first parents in the garden of Eden, and the actual coming of the promised Saviour. The patriarchs were looking for him, but his advent was delayed. The prophets were looking for him, and inquired and searched diligently what, or what manner of time” it would be when He should appear, of whose ‘’ sufferings they testified beforehand, and the glory that should follow.” Holy men were watching and waiting; holy women too were look* mg out in anxious expectation for that highly favored one, who should be the mother of Him who was the Seed of the woman,” and the Son of the Highest.”

But the time was still distant. Four thousand years passed slowly away before this long cherished and eager expectation was fulfilled, and He who thought it no robbery to be equal with God took upon him the form of a servant,” and men beheld his glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” So long indeed was the pro-Eible not of Man. 1 mise delayedj that not a few began to despair of its ever being fulfilled; nor were there wanting those who questioned the divine origin of the predictions which foretold his advent. But he who sees not as man sees,” unto whom a thousand years are as one day, and one day is as a thousand years,” had nevertheless been preparing the way as fast as his unerring wisdom saw best. Events had been taking place of high interest; revolution had been succeeding revolution in the earth with a view to his appearing. ‘’ When the fulness of time was come God sent forth his Son.” It was in every respect the fit season. It was not too soon, nor was it too late, to secure the objects of his incarnation.

The period selected was, in many particulars, a remarkable period; but it was wonderfully fitted to confirm the truth of divine revelation; to wake the nations from their long-continued stupidity and infatuation, and fix their attention upon the design of his advent; as well as to show the power of God in extending his Gospel and kingdom through the aarth, in defiance of the powers of darkness, and the stagnant unbelief of men.

In adverting to some of the characteristics of this period, the first that strikes us is, the extreme corruption of religion and manners throughout the pagan world. We have no means of ascertaining for how long a period after the creation men retained the knowledge of the true God. Very soon after the flood, and certainly as early as the foundation of the Babylonian empire, they became idolaters.

From that period, the greater part of mankind had been wandering in paths which resembled an inextricable labyrinth, the deadly vapors of which extinguished the faint light that conducted their footsteps. More especially from the time in which God called Abraham out from Ur of the Chaldees, do the Gentile nations seem to have been given over to a reprobate mind. From one false notion of the Deity to another more false, and from one system of foolish and demoralizing observances to another, they rushed into idolatry of the grossest form, until they lost sight of most of their religious traditions; and ^’ because they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” had become “Atheists in the world.” Phoenicia, Egypt, and Thrace, transmitted their absurd mythology to Greece and Rome, and amid the multiplicity of their gods, the one only living and true God had no place. A selected and favored few there were, in whose bosoms something like the miniature resemblance of this great truth was locked up as an inaccessible secret; while the multitude thought the Godhead ^’ like unto gold, and silver, and stone, graven by art and man’s device.”

Heathen sages had written upon the nature of virtue and the obligations to practise it, while their own vices showed that they had little knowledge of morals, and were very ineffectual teachers of it to others. ‘^ Across the night of paganism, philosophy flitted on, like the lantern-fly of the tropics, a light to itself, but alas! no more than an ornament of the surrounding darkness.” Thinking minds had proposed to themselves questions of importance to the life that now is, and still more important to that which is to come, without being able to give to any one of them a satisfactory answer. Everywhere they saw mysteries; and withal, so dense a cloud hanging over the vast future, that the farther they pursued their inquiries the deeper were they plunged in painful uncertainty.. Their thoughts of another life were all confused and obscure. Much was written of ^’ manes, and ghosts, and shades of departed men;” their poets sang of streams that emptied into the infernal regions, of “Elysian Fields,” of the seats of the blessed, and of nectar quaffed by the gods; but they were fables got up for the vulgar, and in which the very inventors of them had no confidence. With all her fascinating beauty and tenderness, poetry herself believed not what she wrote; and though in accordance with the spirit of the age she publicly rehearsed the absurdities of her mythology, in her hours of loneliness and reflection she scarcely ventured to echo the strains of her own lyre. The popular and civil theology, established by the laws, “worshipped everything as god except God himself,” and gave its sanction to rites in which there was such a mingling of absurdity, lasciviousness, and cruelty, that they may not be recited. Conscience was not so obdurate and silent, as to be prevented from uttering her admonitions’; nor yet so benighted, as not to have some strong, though indistinct apprehensions of a terrible recompense. Nor

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 1-j

was reason, in the midst of all her degradation, so absolutely stupefied and brutalized, as not sometimes to assert her own greatness, and grasp realities of terrible import. And the more they did this, the more they both stood in frightful perplexity, lest the labyrinth in which they were wandering should border on the verge of the precipice. The state of the pagan mind, however well informed on other subjects, on the subject of religion and morals was to the last degree degraded and melancholy. Among other facts which illustrate this remark, it may be noticed, that the Senate of Rome itself did not pass the decree for the abolition of human sacrifices, until the consulship of Publius Lucius Crassus and Cneius Lentulus, which was but about ninety years before the coming of Christ. Nowhere is so much information upon this point contained within so small a compass, as in the first chapter of PauPs Epistle to the Romans. It is difficult to read the description there given without putting a veil upon one’s face. The schools of virtue had des-enerated into the merest sinks of vice and immorality; theii religion itself had consecrated all sorts of crime, while the best that can be said of their gods is, thai they were the finest representations which the ingenuity and skill of the sculptor could furnish of the basest of human passions.

Such had long been the religious and moral state of the heathen world; and when the Saviour came it was at its maturity. We cannot delineate the scene, nor tell its darkness. It was the gloom of pervading error, and almost universal crime. It could not be seen, for it enveloped men like the mist of midnight, and was “darkness that might be felt.” It penetrated the halls of science and the schools of philosophy; it shrouded the palaces of kings, threw its dark pall over the chambers of legislation, and overlaid, with its broad mantle, the whole pagan world. Temples, with their shrines, victims, and priests, were wrapped in it; their vestal fires became flickering, grew pale, and were extinguished. Men there had been, and were, who had erected stupendous monuments in honor of the human intellect; but on the relations of man to his Maker, they reasoned and wrote like children. In the darkness that overshadowed them they walked at random; they had an aim, they were conscious there was something to seek after; but they groped about, ‘^ if haply they might feel after God, and find him.” Here and there, at long intervals, the human mind cast forth a ray of light, but it was fleeting and gone; like the sudden lightning, it served only to render the gloom which followed more intense and appalling. Night is not darker than the dark day which then overhung the earth. If the deep and dire exigences of men could constitute a fitting season for His coming who was to be the “light of the world,” the time had come to interpose either for exterminating or saving it. There could not have been a more seasonable period for God’s unfolding his own divine method of mercy. The nations could no longer be left in this fearful degradation; the prince of darkness could no longer be permitted to roam the earth without restraint; the God of love could no longer withhold his Son.

Nor was the religious and moral condition of the Jewish nation more enviable than that of the pagan world. The Hebrew race were, from the beginning, designed to be subservient to the introduction of the Gospel to all mankind. Lying as they did upon the borders of Asia, Europe, and Africa, they held a position which signally qualified them to be made use of for this purpose. But by their guilty sympathy with the character of the pagan nations, they became partakers also of their wants and woes. The apostle, after having given the humbling descrij)- tion of other lands, to which we just now referred, applies the same description to the Jews. His epistle was more especially directed to Jews; and his language to them is, ‘-^ Wherefore thou art inexcusable, O man that judgest, for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things?’’ The Jews had long enjoyed the knowledge of God, as it was revealed from heaven; they had been educated amid rites and sacrifices that were prefigurative of the great redemption; they had come to maturity under the instructions of a lawgiver, of holy men, of poets, and of seers who had miraculous intercourse with heaven, and whose great theme was the advent of the predicted Deliverer. But they were an arrogant and proud people, an unbelieving, hard-hearted people, and profited little from their distinguished privileges.

Until “the carrying away into Babylon” they were an idolatrous people — nay, “mad upon their idols.” Wise as their system of religion was, and fitted as it was to answer great and important ends, and of divine origin as it was, it was not designed to be the universal, nor perpetual religion. It was but the commencement of those more complete discoveries of religious truth, which subsequent revelations were to supply; a sort of preparatory school, that was introductory to a more perfect dispensation. The apostle, in his Epistle to the Galatians, dwells upon this thought in its relations to the truth we are illustrating. ^’ Now I say that the heir so long as he is a child differeth nothing from a servant though he be lord of all; but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the father. Even so we, when we were children were in bondage under the elements of the world: but lohen the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of

SOJIS^

The Jewish dispensation, at the time of the Saviour’s coming, was an old and worn out economy; it bore the marks of decay and dissolution; it had accomplished its object without making the nation holy: because it had done its work, it was “ready to vanish away.” It ^’ could not make the comers thereunto perfect.”

But it was important that its inefficacy should be proved; and the actual condition of the Hebrew nation was now such as to convince them, and the worldj how little it could accomphsh. When the Saviour came, their moral depravity was fast adirancing to the last extremities of human wickedness. The cup of their iniquity was full. “Never,” says their own historian Josephus, speaking of them but a few years after the birth of Christ — “never was there a time since the beginning of the world more fruitful in wickedness.” Their national history, from the days of Malachi to John the Baptist, furnishes the most painful and affecting proof that the condition, even of this favored people of God, demanded the interposition of some great Teacher who should speak ‘^ with authority, and not as the Scribes.” Portions of them were sunk in great and disheartening stupidity; and while the minds of other portions were moved and excited, they were in a state of perplexing doubt, cruel fear, and terrible agitation. For four hundred years, the people who had been wont to enjoy habitual intercourse with the Deity, and to receive frequent and repeated instructions from his lips, had not heard the voice of the God of Abraham, nor had a single messenger from heaven visited them. As a nation, they slept the sleep of death, and seemed to be fast verging towards absolute destruction. The nation was not absolutely broken up; their religious and civil economy were not actually dissolved; but they were ‘^ without form and void.”

But the Creator’s purposes were not completed in this dark chaos. Already was his Spirit silently and gently hovering over the face of the waters. Rays of truth began to be evolved, which had long been latent, and here and there a few faint beams emerged from the distant horizon. Minds that had been waiting in anxious expectation, caught the coming day as its first light kissed the hill-tops of Judea, and rose brighter until it fell upon its vales, to “give light to them that sat in darkness and dwelt in the shadow of death.” Lowly cottages were cheered by it, and John saw it in the wilderness. The shepherds of Bethlehem beheld it as they watched their flocks, and heard the cheerful voices that announced its rising: till, at length, the eastern Magi discovered it in the star that led them to the place where the holy child Jesus was cradled.

It is a fact, in several respects of deep interest, that the age in which the Saviour of men became incarnate, was also an age of great intellectual vigor and refinement. This was important, in the first place, for the sake of showing that “the world by wisdom knew not God.” One of the leading infidel objections to Christianity is, that it is needless, and that the lights of human reason and the refinements of philosophy are able to accomplish all that Christianity proposes. This question is to be determined by facts. It is by appealing to the moral character of our race under the brightest periods of this world’s history; to periods when the lights of reason and nature had made all the discoveries they could make, and when the wise men of this world had taught all, and more than they knew, that we can form a just estimate of their instructions. Nor is it by any doubtful or tedious process that we are driven to the conclusion, that the most vigorous and best instructed minds the world has known, themselves knew little of the great subjects of which Christianity treats, and which relate to man’s eternal well-being. It was an age of unequalled civilization and learning when Christ came: so far as human influences could render them so, civilization and learning were at the zenith of their glory. The palmy days of Grecian literature had indeed become obscured: the age of Pericles and Alcibiades passed away when Greece was reduced to a Roman province. But for along time after this, Greece maintained a silent superiority over her conquerors; her arts of peace and her schools of philosophy still gave her the preeminence. Athens was still a great commercial emporium, and the tribunal of the Areopagus, one of the most sacred and reputable courts of law in the Gentile world, was distinguished for its legal research and acumen, and for the weight and irnpartiality of its decisions. Some of the most learned men in Rome were still educated in Greece. Julius Caesar was a pupil of ApoUonius Milo, at Rhodes, and Cicero himself, during the civil wars of Rome, was a pupil of the same scholar, as well as of Philo, a refugee from Athens and then at Rome. The sons of Roman princes and senators to a great extent, either procured Greek instructors in Rome, or were sent to Greece as the favorite habitation of genius, eloquence, and

20 i’”iE BIBLE NOT OF MAN.

fancy, and as the consecrated soil where the arts attained their highest perfection.

Rome, too, then extended her boundaries from the Atlantic on the west, to the Euphrates on the east; and from the Rhine and the Danube on the north, to the deserts of Arabia and Africa on the south. With the exception of Britain soon after subdued by Agricola, the interior of Africa, and the hardy barbarians of the north of Europe, her proud Eagle had become the standard of the world. It was also the golden age of Rome — ‘’the Augustan age,” — proverbial for its preeminence in literature - and the arts. Augustus Caesar, whose personal ’ character might indeed have given him rank with Marius, or Sylla, or Nero, was placed by Divine; providence in circumstances which extended his reputation as a warrior, a statesman and a legislator, to the utmost kingdoms, came to the throne about - twenty years before the Saviour was born, and then veigned in the splendor of his power. Whatever learning and civilization could achieve for the world,/] it had the full and unembarrassed opportunity of -1 performing; while the result shows, that, as the intellect of men became invigorated and accomplished, their morals became degraded, and their religion as degraded and vicious as the human mind can loell conceive it to be. And what more fitting time for introducing the Gospel; for showing that ‘’ the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men?” The Scriptures call our attention to this remarkable fact. ‘’ It 13 written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God, the uoild by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of peaching to save them that believe.” It is an observable expression of Divine wisdom, that his own decree for the moral elevation of men should not be carried into effect until “after that” human wisdom had made its full, and fair, and best experiment, and demonstration was had that •’ the world by wisdom knew not God.” Nor is there to be found at the present day, or at any period in the history of the past, more convincing evidence of the insufficiency of natural religion, than is found in the intellectual refinement of that age in which ^’ the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

There was another important object attained by the Saviour’s advent at this period of intellectual refinement. It was to silence the objection that Christianity could not endure the scrutiny of learning and refinement. In introducing the new religion, a religion which, from the simplicity of its rites, the diffusiveness of its spirit, and the extent of its offered salvation, should stand abreast with the wants of the race, it was greatly desirable that it should be introduced at a time when its claims could be thoroughly canvassed, and the evidence of its divine origin cold be put to the test by the

22 ‘i^HE BIBLE I^OT OF MAN.

severest scrutiny of the most competent and well-furnished minds. It had been an inauspicious circumstance, and a triumph to infidelity not easily silenced, had Christianity, like the religion of Mahomet, commenced its progress in an ignorant and uncivilized country, and in a barbarous age. It had been no difiicult matter, in such an age, to have practised the grossest imposition; nor, at such a period, would men have been qualified for that grave research without which no religion ought to be received, nor for ferreting out those tricks of imposture which are attendant upon all false religions. In this respect Christianity stands upon high ground. Her infant Author first announced himself to an age celebrated in story and immortalized in song. His apostles travelled over classic ground. They established churches in the land of Euclid, of Aristotle, and Longinus; of Demosthenes, Solon, and Lycurgus; of Homer and Pindar; of Terence and Varro, Atticus and Cicero, Sallust and Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Virgil. Lands that had given birth to such men, were not likely to shut their eyes upon the gradual encroachment of a religion that counteracted all their previous notions, and that poured contempt upon their altars and their gods. Rather would they scrutinize, with the utmost severity, every item of the evidence by which a religion, claiming to be from Heaven, was supported. Reckoning from the birth of Augustus Caesar a few years onward, we find a constellation of bright and splendid men throwing their light over the Roman empire. Seneca the preceptor of Nero, and perhaps more distinguished for his moral virtues than any other heathen philosopher; Lucan the poet: Quinius Curtius, the historian of Alexander the Great; Pliny the elder, the celebrated philosopher and natural historian, who perished during an eruption of Mount Vesuvius; Josephus, the celebrated Jewish historian; Martial, Epictetus, and Quintilian, the last of whom was an orator and critic of great celebrity, was patronized by the emperors, established a school of rhetoric at Rome, and whose work remains a text-book in the modern universities of Europe. These were the men, and such as these, who exerted an influence upon the Roman intellect and character at the period when Christianity began its progress.

It may perhaps be still more to our purpose to remark, that the age was one of great legal acumen, and one in which there were not wanting men who were familiar with the laws of evidence, and were trained in the trade of reasoning. The celebrated law of the Twelve Tables, a system of jurisprudence which served as the root of Roman law, which was subsequently digested under Justinian, and which is deemed of no small value in modern times, had already been selected and arranged. It may be questioned, whether the mind of man was ever better prepared to investigate the claims of the new religion, and the great facts on which that religion turned, than was the Gentile mind at that age of the world. And this was the period when the Saviour came. It was when the lights of varied science co-operated with the deeply imbedded prejudices of men against all unwarrantable and ill-founded innovations, that He came who had nothing to fear from the most rigid and unsparing investigation of his title to human confidence.

It may be remarked in the next place, and as an index of bright augury, that at the time the Saviour was horn the world was at peace. Rome had risen to her proud superiority by conquest. The seven hundred years of the Commonwealth had been distinguished by nothing so much as her conflicts with the nations of the earth, and her internal and civil dissensions and massacres. But by a most kind inter-* position of Divine Providence, these evils were now suspended, and there was a universal armistice between the great conqueror and all the nations of the earth. Antiochus of Syria, and the Galatians o Asiatic Gauls, had submitted to Rome on her own terms. The second Macedonian war had terminated the kingdom of Macedon at the battle of Pydna, and the Gre*cian independence was overthrown under the walls of Corinth. Scipio Africanus had terminated the third Punic war by the destruction of Carthage, and the Roman army had been triumphant in Spain and Gaul. T?ie Numidian wars had been brought to a close by Caius Marius, and Jugurtha had been led in triumph to Rome. An efl’ectual check had been given to the Cimmerian and Scythian tribes in the north, the revolt of the Italian allies had been happily terminated by the generosity of their conquerors, and the pirates of Sicily had been finally suppressed and colonized by the prowess and wisdom of Pompey. Jerusalem had been taken also by the same accomplished warrior; and the embittered contest between the popular and aristocratic parties in Rome had been brought to a close, by the triumphant arms of Julius Cassar over Pompey at the battle of Pharsalia. The internal dissensions between Octavius Caesar and Anthony on the one side, and Brutus and Cassius on the other, had been terminated at Philippi; Egypt had been reduced to a Roman province, by the victory of Octavius over the far-famed Glueen Cleopatra; and Octavius, now Augustus Caesar, was called to the throne. The policy of Augustus was a peaceful policy; his object was to effect the stability, rather than the extension of the empire. This emperor died at the advanced age of seventy-five years, between the birth and the crucifixion of Christ, and on his death-bed left his counsel to his statesmen and warriors to make no further incursion upon other lands, but to cultivate the arts of peace. The Cantabrian war was terminated after he came to the throne, and by his orders the temple of Janus was closed. The disturbances in the Bosphorus were now appeased by Agrippa; Drusus was recalled from Germany, and the command of the army in that province intrusted to Tiberius. The ambition of Augustus was gratified by the consolidation of the empire, and all his plans were to augment its splendor by its industry, its literature, its wealth, and its arts. A short period after 26 ‘J’HE BIBLE NOT OF MAN.

the birth of Christ, the war in Germany broke out again; but at the time of his birth, it was a season of profound peace throughout the Roman Empire. The temple of Janus having been reopened during these disturbanceSj it was now again closed, under new auspices, and remained shut until Jerusalem was taken and destroyed by Titus. Janus was the god of war; and as such was before all other gods, even before Jupiter himself. Hence, in the great war between the Latins and the Romans, the formula, dictated by the Pontifex Maximus to Publius Decius when he devoted himself and the legions of the enemy to the gods of death, addresses Janus as the god who was specially invited to go out with them to battle. He was one of the ancient Pelasgian deities. The gate of Janus was the Porta Janualis, one of the gates of the original Rome, on the Palatine road, and an entrance gate into the city. As the city became extended, it was subsequently included within the city itself. His principal temple was that of Janus Quirinus. The statue of this god was set up at the Porta Janualis rather than at any other place, because tradition recorded, that in the battle between the Romans and the Sabines, in the reign of Romulus, he had wrought signal deliverances for Rome on that very spot. It was the usage of the Romans to open the gates of this temple in the time of war, and in the time of peace to shut them. They had been closed but five years since the building of Rome, and once only between the reigns of Numa and Augustus, and that was at the close of the first

Punic war. Rome was shaken by no intestine divisions, and the splendor of her foreign conquests seemed to promise tranquillity for a great while to come. At this period the Saviour was born. Successive wars had agitated the empire for ages; but for twelve years, the confused noise of battle had scarcely been heard.* There was time for thought, for there was tranquillity. It was a fitting season for Him to appear, who was the Prince of Peace and the harbinger of reconciliation between God and man. It was predicted of him, that “in his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace, so long as the moon endureth.”

The mild genius of Christianity has nothing to do with war, save to exterminate it from the earth. The spirit of Christ is not the spirit of blood. Military history is not the history of the true Gospel. ^’I came not,” says its Divine Author, ‘to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” - The church of God may be an injured, a suffering, a subjugated community, but she is not a ferocious and warlike community. Of all the causes which obstruct the progress of Christianity, war is the most fatal — the growling faces of the double-headed Janus, the most terrific. There were none of these fears, and none of these distractions, when He descended to dwell with men, who was to subdue their selfish and ferocious passions, and ^’make wars cease unto the ends of the earth.” He who from his high and holy place

* Prideaux’ Connexions. — Blair’s Chronological Tables. — Encyclop. Art Rom. Empire, and Arnold’s Rome.

assorts the prerogative, ‘^ I form the light and create darkness; I make peace and create evil;” and in “whose hand is the heart of the king, and he turneth it whithersoever he will,” had hushed the jarring interests and the more jarring hearts of men, for the purpose of setting up his kingdom, and giving an impulse to his empire, who “shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks,” neither shall they “learn war any more.”

“Peaceful was the night,
Wherein the Prince of light
His reign of peace on earth began.”

In the beautiful language of the greatest of English poets,

“No war, or battle’s sound
Was heard the world around;
The idle spear and shield were high uphung,
The hooked chariot stood
Unstained with hostile blood,
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng,
And kings sat still with awful eye,
As if they surely knew their Sovereign Lord was by.”

Another fact of interest is, that the time of the Saviour s combing was that predicted in the Jewish Scriptures, He himself was a Jew, and his first mission was to the Jewish people. ‘^ Unto you first^’^ says the Apostle Peter to the Jews, “God having raised up his Son .Tesus, sent him to bless you, in turning every one of you from his iniquities.” His own commission to his immediate disciples was. to ‘^ go first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” “beginning at Jerusalem.” The sum and substance of all the predictions in the Old Testament, the whole scope and spirit of the entire system of its prophecies, is the testimony it bears to Jesus Christ. Either from the teachings of their own lingering traditions, or from their acquaintance with the dispersed Jews, or from their knowledge of the Old Testament Scriptures, translated as they had been into the beautiful and fertile language of the Greeks, and of which the curiosity of every scholar would have led him to know something, or from some heaven-imparted intimation, or from all these combined, there was a general expectation, even in the pagan mind, of some great and salutary change in human affairs, through the appearance and interposition of some distinguished Personage, who would become the benefactor of the race. Wise heathen there were, who had expressed the hope that the world would ere long find some relief from the pervading doubts and darkness that had so long rested upon it, in the dawning, at least, of a brighter day. The beautiful Eclogue of Virgil, addressed to the Emperor Augustus, in which he sings of the approaching Golden Age, sometimes seems to the Christian scholar to be almost an inspired prediction, in which this most beautiful of all the Latin poets was carried out of himself, to speak of the new and Divine Messenger who was to be born under the reign of this favored prince. Different nations of the earth were in actual, though somewhat vague and undefined expectation of some such great and philanthropic Deliverer. Their state of mind seems to have resembled that of the pagans of the Southern Islands in our day, who were disgusted and sick at heart of their own idolatry, and prepared to throw their idols “to the moles and the bats,” almost on the first announcement of the true religion. Men were weary of the past; they had a sort of hope that the time was near when this gloom of ages, this wintry frown would be succeeded by the renovation and loveliness of the spring-time of a new year- — a new era, verdant with the hope and promise of a rich harvest.

This vague impression upon the Gentile world assumed the form of more definite expectation among the Jews. Their own Scriptures had not merely intimated a brighter and blander period, but their prophets had pictured it in a perspective, the limits of which their own eyes beheld with remarkable precision. It was not a* dream, which fascinated them; for they held in their hands most remarkable and astonishingly minute descriptions of the Person of their expected Messiah, and the circumstances and time of his appearing. The first promise in the Garden of Eden had told them that he would be of human descent, and subsequent revelations indicated that he would be of Hebrew origin. The thne of his advent was determined by three distinct passages in their own Scriptures.

^’ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.^’* This prediction affirms, that the Hebrew state shall not have passed away U7itil the Messiah shall have appeared. In many respects, the political and legislative authority of the Jews had passed away before the Saviour was born. Judea was a subjugated province of the Roman Empire; her inhabitants were enrolled and taxed by the Emperor Augustus; her laws were made by Rome; and a Roman governor had his palace in Jerusalem, there held his court, and swayed his sceptre over the vanquished Jews. But emblems of authority remained among them still; the were still recognized as an embodied people, until several years after the Saviour’s advent, and the actual destruction of the city and temple by Titus. From the period of the restoration of the city after the Babylonian captivity, up to its utter demolition by the legions of Rome, there always had been “some person, or body of persons,” who ruled, or professed to rule according to the law of Moses.”* After this, the sceptre and the lawgiver had departed from Judah forever.

A prediction is also contained in the writings of Haggai and Malachi, in relation to the temple, of the following import: And I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all nations shall come. And I will fill this house with glory, saith the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than

* See Stroud’s Dissertation on the seventy weeks of Daniel.

of the former, saith the Lord of hosts. And the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in: behold he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” The personage here spoken of is the promised Messiah; he was to come before the temple was finally destroyed, and to fill it with his presence and glory. He did come, and did thus fill the temple with his presence and glory; and less than forty years after his coming it was laid in ruins, and has never been rebuilt.

But the most remarkable prediction in relation to his advent, is contained in the prophecies of Daniel. While this prophet was engaged in prayer, the Angel Gabriel was sent from heaven to make to him the following communication. ^’ Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people, and upon thy holy city, to finish transgression, to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem, unto Messiah the Prince, shall be seven weeks and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks, shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are deter-PRELIMIxNARY ESSAY. 33

mined.” The person whose coming is here spoken of is the Messiah the Prince, who was to make an end of sin, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness. The time in which he should come was towards the close of the seventy weeks, commencing with Jerusalem as restored by the decree of Artaxerxes, and extending to its destruction by Titus.

The Jewish weeks were of two kinds: the one, the ordinary week, consisting of seven days; the other, the extraordinary, or prophetical, consisting of seven years. They had Sabbatic years, by which their years were divided into weeks of years, each week containing seven years. If the ordinary computation, making a week to consist of seven days, be adopted in this prophecy of Daniel, it is impossible to see how so many great events as are included in the prophecy, could take place within the small compass of seventy weeks of days, or less than one year and a half. It will be recollected that the repairing of Jerusalem itself, and the restoration of the civil and religious polity of the Jews under Ezra and Nehemiah, occupied forty-nine years; so that the prophecy remains to be explained by the extraordinary and prophetic computation which counts a day for a year. These seventy weeks, therefore, amount to four hundred and ninety years.

This term of four hundred and ninety years begins with the complete restoration of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity under Nehemiah, and ends with their dissolution by the armies of Rome, when

Bible not «f Ma a. 2*’’ the city was destroyed, the people dispersed, the temple burned, its religious services abolished; and people, and government, and religion, sank together into a common ruin. Now we know with great precision the time when this latter event took place. It was in ^Uhe month of September, in the year of our Lord 70, according to the vulgar era.” Here the four hundred and ninety years terminated; so that reckoning back from this period four hundred and ninety years, we come to the year before Christ, 420. This ought to be the year when, according to this prophecy, the holy city, the temple worship, and the civil and religious polity of the Jews were fully restored and established, after the desolations of their captivity in Babylon. And this was the year of its restoration. It was in the year 420 before Christ, that Nehemiah, on his second visit to Jerusalem, finally succeeded in bringing the city of his fathers into the state required by the words of the angel. Consequently, the complete restoration and final ruin of the city fully answer to the beginning and end of the predicted term.“^ According to the terms of Daniel’s prophecy, it was not until after the expiration of threescore and tioo weeks, or sixty-two weeks of years, that is, four hundred and ninety-four years from the restoration of Jerusalem, that the Messiah was to be ‘cut off;” and it was in the

* I have followed in this interpretation the views of Dr. Stroud. After comparing with some care what has been written on this ’ subject by Prideaux, Newton, Marshall, Faber, and Blaney, Dr Stroud appears to my own mind to have the preference.

third year of DaniePs * sixty-fifth week that he was actually crucified. It was a fitting timej therefore, for the coming of Christ, which thus confirmed the truth of those memorable predictions concerning his advent, and thus established the faith of his people in him as the Divine Author of the Christian dispensation.

There is one more thought which we may not suppress, which, in view of some of the objections of some infidel writers to the Christian argument derived from the rapid and extensive propagation of Christianity, deserves a moment’s consideration. It is, that the time of the Saviour’s advent was such that it is difficult to account for the success of the Gospel without the intervention of Almighty power. History establishes several important facts in relation to this subject, which demand notice.

The first is, that within the first century of the Christian era, the Gospel had made a progress that is altogether unexampled and without a parallel. In less than a single year after its Founder was accused as a malefactor, and on the very soil where his blood was shed, its converts amounted to nearly ten thousand; in less than two years it overran Judea and in less than a single century it pervaded Syria and Lybia, Egypt and Arabia, Persia and Mesopotamia Armenia and Parthia, the whole of Asia Minor, and no small part of Europe.

The next fact is, that when it began its progress the prejudices of both pagans and Jews were alike hostile to it. All the world were either Jews, or pagans; all the world was opposed to Christianity. It had to make its way against the intellect and learning both of Jews and pagans; against the habits of both, than which there is no more dangerous experiment. The political force of both pagans and Jews was also against it. With respect to the Jews, the Sanhedrim was to be opposed; and they had power both over the moral and physical strength of the nation. Despised as the Jews were by the pagans, and though a subjugated and contemned people, they made common cause with pagans against Christianity. It is a principle of human nature, that when any set of men are selected as objects of contempt, that moment are they joined together as a firm and cemented band. The strength of their union depends upon the greatness of the contempt, or injuries, which they suffer; they will make sacrifices against a common enemy, which they would find it difficult to make for their individual safety. The Jews when among the heathen were obliged to suffer this contempt, and therefore were bound firmly together. Yet when any of them became Christians, they did so in opposition to the persecution of their own countrymen, as well as the surrounding pagans; thus proving that the enmity of the human heart against the Gospel is stronger than this strong principle of association. But notwithstanding all this, when an encounter was fairly instituted between the combined hostility of pagans and Jews on the one hand, and Christianity on the other, the latter was the conqueror. There is something wondrous in this rapid spread of the Gospel in such an age, and something which cannot be accounted for upon ordinary principles.

On the principles by which men are usually governed, there must have been greater intellect on the side of Christianity, than on the side of its opposers; or there must have been greater bribes; or there must have been vast inducements addressed to man’s sense of enjoyment. But there was nothing of all this. On the contrary, here are unlettered Jews contending with the intellectual refinement, and subtil philosophy of the Augustan age; preaching Jesus Christ to men who ‘’ sought after wisdom,’’ and to whom Christ was a stumbling block and his cross foolishness. Here are unlettered fishermen of Galilee, encountering the pride of Grecian and Roman philosophy, and meeting the scoffs of the lawyers of the Areopagus, ‘’ What will this babbler say?” when Paul ‘’ preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.” Was it probable that the pride of distinction and learning, in that proudest and most brilliant age, was to be subdued by men, of whom it is acknowledged that they were neither wise, nor mighty, but were selected for their work because “God hath chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty; and base things of the world, and things that are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence I”

And what bribes, what inducements were offered them? They were to take joyfully the spoiling of their goods; to forsake all, and follow Christ; to bear his reproach, and follow him to stripes, imprisonment and death.

Nor was the reason of their success to be found m the pliant and accommodating character of Christianity, yielding itself to the claims of Judaism and paganism, and easily becoming amalgamated with either, or both. So far from this, one of the peculiar obstacles it had to contend with was, that its propagators never fraternized with any of their opposers. The pagans did not object to the idols of any nation, provided they would unite in worshipping theirs. The Roman Senate itself expressed a willingness to place the statue of Jesus among their gods; but Christianity was not ambitious of this honor; and for her misnamed intolerance, she became the hated religion. She had and would have no fraternity with the idolatry and vices of the age, but ‘’ rather reproved’’ and stood aloof from all; and was therefore denounced as the unsocial and intolerant religion.

Nor can it be said, as has been affirmed by the historian Gibbon, that their success was to be attributed to the miraculous powers which were ascribed to the primitive church. If these powers were truly miraculous, then were these propagators of the Gospel divinely commissioned, and their message was divine. If they were but pretensions to miraculous power, and a system of magic and deception, they

PRELL^IINARY ESSxY. 39

must have made Christianity weak and contemptible.

Nor may it be said, that their success is to be attributed to the fact that Christianity was a persecuted religion; and that because persecution increases the interest and zeal of the persecuted party, and rouses the sympathy of the people, therefore it might be expected that it would make friends by its very persecution. Persecution often destroys the interest of the persecuted party. It is contrary to the principles of human nature, to suppose that any man embraces any system whatever because he is to suffer for it. What destroyed the reformed religion in France? what prevented its progress in Portugal? what drove the religion that was once introduced into China, out of it? Persecution. What drove it out from the valley of the Valteline, once in the possession of the Italian Protestants? In the memorable massacre by the Jesuits, Protestantism was crushed, and disappeared entirely from the valley. Are we not justified in saying, that wherever there is sufficient persecution to put in requisition, and at the same time sustain the confidence and moral courage of men, and not to crush it, there it tends to increase the persecuted; but when persecution rises higher than this, the effect is just the contrary: the persecuted cannot weather the storm.

There is not an infidel in the world who believes the truth of this objection, or if he does, who believes in his own principles. Infidels never tell a man whom they would draw over to their views, that he may expect to suffer death for them. We conclude then, that seeing they never use this method of making proselytes, they either do not believe their own argument, or they teach that which is false. The first is contrary to human nature; the last is consonant with it.

Nor is it true, as the accomplished historian before referred to asserts, that the unexampled success of Christianity in the first ages is attributable to the union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually, formed an independent and increasing State in the heart of the Roman Ewpire. This union was not formed until three hundred years after the death of Christ, while the most rapid propagation of the Gospel took place during the first century. Alas, for Gibbon! infidel as he was, a superintending Providence so restrained, directed, and controlled his pen, that he has furnished the antidote to his own poison; and a careful reader may collect from his own pages, what may easily detect and neutralize his infidelity. Like Balaam, he ^’ could not curse whom God hath not cursed;” nor “defy whom the Lord hath not defied.” It was the complaint of the great enemy of Israel against their false prophet, ‘’ I took thee to curse mine enemies, and behold, thou hast blessed them altogether!” Nothing is more obvious than that, in all those important particulars in which secondary causes could have contributed to the advancement of Christianity, the age in which it began its progress was hostile to its success, and everywhere opposed the greatest obstacles PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 4i

to its triumph; nor could any secondary causes overcome the deep-rooted aversion of both Jews and pagans to its claims.

These general remarks gain the more credibility and strength from our own observation of facts. Compare the progress of the Gospel among our own Aborigines, among the Hindoos and Chinese, with the so much greater progress of it in the days of the apostles. There are now almost as many advantages in its favor, as there were then disadvantages against it. Yet its progress is less. How is this to be explained except by the fact, that the apostles did not go alone to their work, but were attended by the Spirit of their Divine Master. Christianity was introduced at an age of the world, when it would Iiave been crushed and annihilated, and absolutely still-born, but for its own inherent immutability and the presence and guardianship of its heavenly Parent. The age itself was fitted to show that there was a Divine interposition in behalf of those who propagated it, and therefore that it is itself divine. On any other supposition, than that the men who propagated it were under the direction and patronage of Almighty God, their success cannot be explained.

The time when the Saviour came was therefore remarkably fitted to determine, whether his religion possessed intrinsic excellence and power, and whether its place on the earth could be attributed to mere secondary causes, or to the power of God. It was remarkably fitted to decide, whether the character of its Founder was entitled to respect, veneration, and love; whether the witnesses to the facts on which it is founded were entitled to credit and confidence; whether they were either madmen, or impostors; whether the doctrines they taught found a ready advocate in the bosom of a world that lieth in wickedness, or whether, if they carried the hearts of men, it must have been owing to the power of God ;- — whether the character which Christianity formed, and the effects it produced, were such as constituted the adornment of man’s nature, and a virtuous, peaceful, and happy community; and whether there was anything like trick, or management in selecting the period of introducing it to the world, so that on this account it should be likely to meet with the fewest opposers, and the greatest facility of access. Was it the period when the established religions of the earth favored it; or when it was patronized by the laws of the land; or when the m.inds of men had any professed or secret bias in its favor? Or was it a period when it had everything to contend with that is human, and when, if it found a dwelling on the earth, it was because it was the offspring of the skies, and had a pla,ce prepared for it of God?

There was most certainly design, and a special Providence, in the selection of such a period of the world for the introduction of the new religion: a religion proclaimed to the race, and to continue to the end of time. It was not a period chosen at random, or accidentally hit upon; but one, in the ap-I pointment and arrangement of which we may well admire the Divine wisdom. No impostor would have selected it. It was in every view the fit time for the coming of the Great Deliverer. “Ascribe ye greatness unto our God; he is a rock, his work is perfect.”

Of the great Saviour it is declared, that “all things were made by him, and for him;” and that “he is Head over all things to the Church.” Men have wondered why the fulfilment of the promise in Eden was so long delayed; but ‘^ God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways.” We may not now fully see the wisdom of this Divine arrangement, and the manifold relations it then sustained, and sustains still to the honor of the Son of God, and the indications it furnishes that he is indeed the One commissioned to perpetuate a spiritual kingdom on the earth where he was born and crucified. But of this one thing we are assured, that that kingdom will be perpetuated, till the whole earth shall be filled with his glory. The great temple, the laying of the corner-stone of which employed four thousand years, is not to be completed in a day. Its grandeur and magnificence will bear some proportion to those preparatory measures and ages, which were but preliminary to its advancement and completion. It is but eighteen hundred years since it was set on its firm foundations; and it has as yet scarcely begun to grow. A great and glorious kingdom it is, and will go on increasing in extent, in purity, in power, in heavenly splendor, until “the stone cut out of the mountain without hands, shall become a great mountain and fill the earth.”

The end is not yet. When the day dawns on which it shall come, it will witness results such as the strongest faith has not fully anticipated. The world of matter was made for the world of mind; time for eternity; the world for the church; all things for the kingdom of Christ. Good for the man that he had never been born, who arrays himself in opposition to this kingdom; who is found without its hallowed limits. ‘^ Behold, ye despisers and wonder, and perish!” Time flies swiftly; one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. He testifies, ^’ Surely 1 come quickly;” and let every heart respond, ‘’ Even so, come Lord Jesus.” Who will not hail his coming; and with the grateful emotions of the sweetest of all the sons of song, exclaim,

“Come then, and added to thy many crowns, Receive yet one — the crown of all the earth, Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine By ancient covenant, ere nature’s birth; And thou hast made it thine by purchase since, And overpaid its value with thy blood 1”