proach, delivered from its servitude to evil, and brought into a likeness to the Redeemer, to whom it is spiritu ally united, as the branches are in the vine.

Jesus came to plant within the soul a life of filial union to God. In the assured confidence and peace of that life there would be a conscious superiority to the world, an independence of the changes and chances of this mortal state. In that life of heavenly trust, fears and anxieties of an earthly nature would lose their power to break the calm of the spirit. There would inhere in it a power to overcome the world. Resentful passions would die out in the recollection of the heavenly Father's patience and forgiving love, and in the sense of the inestimable worth that belongs to every soul, however unworthy. A secret life, serene in the midst of sorrow and danger, a perennial fountain of rest, and stimulus to kindly and beneficent exertion, such was the gift of Christ to men. "My peace I give unto you." This life he first realized in himself. He maintained and perfected it through conflict. He imparts it through the channel of personal union and fellowship.1 The Stoic sought for tranquillity. He purchased it by subjecting the natural affections and emotions to the tyranny of an iron will. It was freedom from disquiet, attained by paralyzing a part of human nature. If gentleness and sympathy survived, as in individuals like Marcus Aurelius, it was in the case of souls remarkably favored in their native qualities, or not conformed practically to the hard and gloomy dog mas which formed the basis of their system. Christian serenity leaves room for the full flow and warmth of al human sympathies and affections. The Buddhist sought

1 This life is admirably set forth in that classic of devotional litera ture, The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis.

for inward peace. He sought for it, likewise, in a renunciation of the world. But the path was that of the ascetic. The Christian is empowered to use the world without abusing it, or being enslaved to it. He is not obliged to fling away the good gifts of God; but, by making them servants instead of masters, he can enjoy, and yet can forego, that which he possesses. He car ries within him a treasure sufficient when all else is lost.

This is but a meagre sketch of what the soul actually finds in Christianity as bread for its hunger. It is a question of historic fact. There have been millions of human beings who have been delivered from conscious alienation from God, and enabled to live lives of comparative purity and well-doing, and to die in peace, in the hope of immortal life, in the way delineated. This effect of Christianity, age after age, would be inexplicable, were there not an adaptedness in it to the needs of human nature. For example, the conquest of the Roman Empire by the Christian faith is an insoluble problem, except on the supposition of a profound correspondence between the moral and spiritual necessities of the soul and the cravings of the heart, on the one hand, and the Christian faith on the other. Causes like those assigned by Gibbon need themselves to be accounted for. They mainly describe traits of Christianity itself: they would have been inoperative independently of the impression made by Christ himself.

There being this adaptedness in Christianity to man's spiritual being, how shall it be accounted for? Can it be attributed to the Nazarene and to the group of fish ermen who followed him, they being credited with no more than an ordinary human insight? Is there not reason to conclude that supernatural agency, even a

divine wisdom and will, was active in this great move ment? Leaving out of view other kinds of proof, as that from testimony to miracles, the practical argument for the miraculous origin of Christianity, from its proving itself the counterpart of human need and the fulfilment of the soul's highest aspirations, is one difficult to controvert. It is the argument of the man born blind, who replied to the objections of the Pharisees, "Whether he be a sinner or no, I know not: one thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.”1

1 John ix. 25.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ARGUMENT FOR CHRISTIANITY FROM THE CHAR ACTER OF THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM OF DOCTRINE.

CHRISTIANITY verifies itself by the satisfaction which it affords to reason. It is true that, in one particular, Christianity is broadly distinguished from systems of human philosophy. It professes to have another object than merely to present a theory or exposition of the nature of things. It will do more than draw in outline "an intellectual system of the universe." Inquisitive minds, in past times and in our own day, have sought to unveil that rational order, which, it is taken for granted, pervades the world, and binds together the beings that compose it; and they have aspired to trace all things back to their ultimate origin. Christianity is a religion, and it is the religion of redemption. It includes things done, interpositions of God in history, a signal expression and achievement of love on the plane of human action. In a word, Christianity is historical. It contains an element intractable to mere speculation. It can be evolved by no a priori reasoning from axiomatic truth. It does not admit of being resolved into a chain of metaphysical ideas.

Yet Christianity is a system of truth. As such it invites comparison with other systems. It embraces conceptions of God and of man, the two parties with whom redemption is concerned; and, respecting redemption itself, it asserts a consonance of this historic

transaction with the principles of right reason. The origin of things, the nature and chief end of man, the relation of man to the world in which he is placed, the purport of history, what evil is, and how it is related to the universe as a whole, and to its First Cause, - these are some of the important points which philosophy has always dealt with, and on which Chris tianity presents a teaching of its own. Is this teaching satisfactory to reason? The question is not whether it clears up all difficulties. The proposal to do this would of itself constitute a presumption against the pretensions of any system. Omniscience is not, and can not be made, an attribute of men. But does the Christian system shed enough of light on the problems referred to to inspire confidence in it? And is it so reasonable and so lofty a system, that we are led to refer it to a higher source than the human minds directly concerned in the framing of it? With these questions in mind, let us glance at some of the principal characteristics of the Christian doctrine.

It may be thought that these questions imply a capacity of reason to judge which it does not possess, and which Christianity even denies to it. The limit of reason, it may be said, is reached when the fact of a revelation has been rationally established. Nothing further remains but a docile reception of what revelation affirms. Are not the doctrines of the gospel an offence to reason? Does not the New Testament say this? Does not history confirm it?

In answer, let it be observed, that, when reason sits in judgment on the question whether a revelation has been made, it exercises an imperial function. How, moreover, can it avoid forming its conclusion partly on what the alleged revelation teaches? Yet the objec