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THAT men are fallen creatures, the past history and the present condition of the world sufficiently prove. Christianity professes to reveal the only means by which they can be restored to the favor of God and to happiness. Two great difficulties stand in the way of such restoration, viz.: their legal responsibilities and their moral character. As transgressors, all are condemned; as sinners they are hateful to God, and are miserable. Christianity offers gratuitous justification through the atonement of Jesus Christ, and sanctification by the Holy Spirit through revealed truth. It proposes to secure to those who embrace it, a title to an eternal inheritance, and to fit them for its enjoyment. Sinful affections, as the Scriptures teach, are necessarily the cause of misery. Perfect happiness, therefore, cannot be enjoyed, unless perfect holiness be attained.

The chief means by which the moral perfection of human nature is to be accomplished, is the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," said our Saviour to the Jews who believed on him, "and the truth shall make you free." "Sanctify them through thy truth," he prayed for his disciples, "thy word is truth." Christianity is eminently distinguished from all other systems of religion, in that the affections it requires, and the virtues it inculcates, arise and are matured in connection with correct views of truth. The service it demands, therefore, being obedience to the truth, is eminently a "reasonable service." The doctrine of the Scriptures is, that the tendency of moral and religious truth is to produce virtuous affections and upright conduct; the tendency of error, the reverse. False teachers, therefore, as our Saviour taught, are to be distinguished from the true "by their fruits"-that is, by the effects of their doctrines upon their own moral character, and upon that of their followers. One might as reasonably expect to gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles, as to find true virtue the result of false principles. The same idea is beautifully expressed by Bacon-" Truth and goodness differ but as the seal and the print; for truth prints goodness." I think, I may venture to as

sume the truth of this principle without labored argument, and may venture, without the fear of contradiction, to found upon it the following proposition, viz.:

There is no safer test of the truth of any system of religious belief, than its practical effects upon those who embrace it. If the practical effects of any system are partly good and partly bad, then it is partly true and partly false. If they are wholly good, then it is wholly true. But in looking for the effects of Christianity we must be careful not to attribute to it effects which it does not produce. Mistakes on this point have thrown upon it most unmerited reproaches, and have driven multitudes to infidelity. That we may avoid such an error, and obtain a fair view of this important subject, I remark—

1. Christianity cannot be justly held responsible for evils existing where its doctrines and worship have been materially changed and corrupted. It is not fair, for example, to charge Christianity with the ignorance and the immorality which prevail in countries, where Roman Catholicism predominates. For there the people have not access to the Scriptures; and the doctrines of the gospel have been corrupted by a multitude of human traditions, and by the interpretations of a corrupt priesthood. We are here to defend Christianity as it is presented to us in the Bible alone.

2. Nor is Christianity to be held responsible for evils resulting from interpreting the Scriptures according to popular systems of philosophy. Both in ancient and modern times not a few professed expounders of the Scriptures have insisted, that philosophy must furnish the key to the right understanding of them. Origen, the most learned of the Christian fathers, employed all his learning and ingenuity in the vain effort to harmonize the doctrines of Revelation and the philosophy of Plato and his followers. To do this, it became necessary to neglect the obvious meaning of the language of the Scriptures, and to adopt the most fanciful methods of interpretation; and it is not difficult to trace many of the most absurd superstitions of the dark ages to the unnatural union of false philosophy and Christianity. And in modern times many learned men in Germany have attempted to expound the Bible in accordance with a system of philosophy which denies the possibility of inspiration. "Esteeming themselves wise, they became fools." The same philosophy which declared inspiration an impossibility, drove its admirers into the glaring absurdities of Pantheism.

The Bible was not written exclusively or chiefly for learned men, but for the people; and its writers intended to be understood. We insist, therefore, that it be understood according to the obvious meaning of its language; and we are prepared to abide the result. If, when thus interpreted, its effects are bad, let its claims be rejected.

3. Christianity cannot be expected to produce its legitimate fruits where church and state are united. The church is trammelled by the legislation of men who neither understand the doctrines, nor regard the precepts of the gospel; and civil honors and worldly gain bribe corrupt men to enter her pale, and to seek the ministerial office. If you would judge fairly of any system of religion or of morals, examine its fruits where it stands on its own merits, and makes its own impress upon the characters of men. Christianity has achieved her most glorious triumphs, when the world stood in open hostility to her; and she asks still to be allowed to stand forth in the majesty and power of truth, and to be judged by her fruits.

4. It is important to remark, that Christianity proposes gradually to purify, not instantly to perfect those who embrace it. Their progress is as the growth of the human body from infancy to manhood, or as the gradually increasing light from the early dawn to "the perfect day." Even the Apostles of Christ professed not to have attained perfect holiness, but only to be pressing toward it. We must, therefore, expect to find imperfections even in sincere Christians, and still greater imperfections in the church, since it is impossible entirely to exclude from its pale, self-deceived or hypocritical men. But when evils do appear, fairness and candor require us, before admitting them as evidences against the claims of Christianity, to inquire, whether they are the result of adherence to its doctrines, or of departure from them. If the former be true, an argument, we acknowledge, is thus presented against its claims; if the latter, those very evils prove its truth. The skill of a physician is as clearly proved by the fact that his patients suffer by departing from his prescriptions, as that their health is improved by regarding them.

We are now prepared to inquire into the practical tendencies of Christianity. These are so numerous and so important, that we can do little more, in a single discourse, than glance at the more prominent.

I. Our first inquiry shall be concerning the moral effects of Christianity. Sin, as the Scriptures teach, is not only dishonoring to God, whose moral image it effaces from the human mind, and

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