Having thus explained our meaning, when we say that faith is obscure, when we say that the Christian believes what he sees not, we do not by this understand that he believes in what is destitute of proof, we only mean that he believes the truth of facts, of which he has not been an eye-witness, that he believes in truths which he could not have discovered by his own reason, and that he hopes for a felicity of which he has not a distinct idea: but he believes those facts, on the unanimous testimony of a great number of witnesses, who could not possibly have acted in concert to deceive him: he believes those truths on an infallible testimony: he hopes on that same testimony, namely, on the word of God himself. In all these things, the evidence of testimony supplies the evidence of object.

That it is of this kind of faith, we are to understand these words in our text, "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed," the occasion on which they were pronounced permits us not to doubt. Of what was Jesus Christ speaking to Thomas? Of his own resurrection. Who are the persons he had in view, whom Providence was afterward to call to believe, without having seen? Those who could not possibly be the eye-witnesses of that resurrection. But were the persons, who should be called to believe the doctrine of the resurrection, to believe it without satisfying reasons of its truth and certainty? By no means. Call to your recollection, a part of what we submitted to your consideration, on this subject, upon another occasion. We have in confirmation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 1. Presumptions. 2. Proofs. 3. De

monstrations.

I. The circumstances of the death of the Saviour, and of his burial, furnish us with presumptions on this subject. Jesus Christ died: his body was deposited in the tomb; but a few days afterward it was not to be found there. We thence presume that Jesus Christ is risen again. If Jesus Christ be not risen, his body must have been conveyed away: but how is it possible to maintain such an assertion? To whom shall we impute such conveyance? Not surely to his enemies. Could they be suspected of a design to contribute to his glory, by giving currency to the report of his resurrection? It can as little be imputed to his disciples. They had no inclination to do so: for how could men so notoriously timid, have formed an enterprise so daring and dangerous, and that in favour of a man (I go on the supposition that Jesus Christ did not rise again,) who had thus abused their credulity? But had their inclination been ever so strong, was it in their power either to surprise or to discomfit a guard forewarned of the design? These I call presumptions.

II. The testimony of the apostles furnishes us with proofs of the resurrection. This testimony possesses no less than eight distinct characters, which raise it beyond the reach of all suspicion: 1. The nature of the witnesses, who had neither the credit, nor the riches, nor the eloquence necessary to practise an impos

The reader is referred to the sermon on The Resurrection of Jesus Christ, of Mr. Robinson's Selection.

ture on mankind: 2. The number of those witnesses, amounting to more than five hundred: 3. The nature of the facts which are the subject of their evidence, things in which it was impossible they should deceive themselves, things which they had seen, heard, and perceived in the most sensible and palpable manner: 4. The uniformity of their testimony, which in no one instance ever contradicted itself: 5. The judges before whom their evidence was given; judges expert in the art of involving cheats in self-contradiction, but who never could detect any, in the witnesses of whom we are speaking: 6. The place where their testimony was published; for had the apostles gone and published the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, in regions remote from that where the fact could be completely sifted, they might have fallen under suspicion; but they attest it to the face of the whole city of Jerusalem itself: 7. The time when this testimony was published, respecting which the same reasoning applies which does to the circumstance of place: 8. The motives by which those witnesses were actuated, and which could be no other but the satisfying of their own consciences, as, so far from having a temporal interest to promote, by the publication of this event, every temporal interest pressed in the opposite direction.

But we have, likewise, of this truth, demonstrations properly so called. With these we are furnished in the miraculous gifts communicated to those who attest it; of which we cannot entertain any doubt, without taxing with extravagance three sorts of persons equally clear of all ground of suspicion on such an occasion: 1. The apostles, who gave the history of those miracles, and relate in a manner the best adapted to expose imposture, on the supposition of their having been impostors: 2. Their enemies, who in their writings against them, have not denied that they wrought miracies, but that these miracles were a proof of the truth of their doctrine: 3. Finally, their proselytes, who had the greatest imaginable interest in examining whether it were true that the apostles wrought miracles, who had all possible opportunities of ascertaining the fact, and who sacrificed their property, their reputation, their life, for a religion entirely resting on this truth-The apostles work miracles. These we call so many demonstrations.

This recapitulation sufficiently instructs us, that we are not called upon to believe an event so very extraordinary, as if it were destitute of proof: on the contrary, we believe it on proofs clear, cogent, and decisive. When, therefore, Jesus Christ says, "Blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed," he means not to say, that it is blessed to believe things destitute of evidence: he speaks only of things which have not the evidence of object, but which have that of testimony.

Let us pursue this thought a little farther. The idea which we have suggested of obscure faith, distinguishes it from three kinds of conviction, which are but too frequently confounded with it: the faith extorted by tyranny; the faith generated in the brain of the enthusiast; and the faith of the superstitious.

1. The faith of which we speak, must be

We denominate that the faith extorted by tyranny, which is yielded to the insolent decisions of a doctor, who gives himself out as infallible, without proving it; or to fabulous legends, unsupported by any respectable testimony. How, under the pretext that I am bound to believe facts, which I may never have seen with my own eyes, am I laid under an obligation to swallow every thing that a legendary is pleased to tell me? How, under the pretext that I am bound to believe truths which are above the reach of my reason, am I laid under an obligation to believe every thing proposed to me by a man, who may be practising upon my credulity?. And upon my refusing to believe on such a foundation, shall I be taxed with being incredulous like Thomas, and with saying as he did, "Except I shall see in his hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I will not believe!"

If you would have me believe the facts which you propose, produce me the proofs which support them, if not as complete as those which assure me of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, at least, such as are somewhat of a similar nature; and if you wish I should consider you as infallible, like the apostles, produce me proofs of your infallibility, equivalent to those which the apostles produced of theirs. But if on examining such pretended facts, I discover that they are fictions merely; if on examining the foundation upon which your infallibility rests, I find that the men who gave themselves out for infallible, while they lay claim to the infallibility of the apostles, are undermining the doctrine of the apostles, I shall not reckon myself obliged to pay the slightest deference to their decisions. The faith which these decisions attempt to produce, will be faith extorted by tyranny, and which will have no relation whatever to that faith which Jesus Christ expects from his disciples, and which is, in truth, obscure, but nevertheless, well founded; which is destitute indeed, of the evidence of object, but which is ever accompanied with the evidence of testimony.

2. In the second place, the faith, of which we are treating, must be distinguished from that of the enthusiast; I mean that of certain Christians, who found the reasons which induce them to believe, entirely on such and such impulses, which they pretend to be the operation of the Spirit of God: impulses destitute of illumination, and which determine the person thus agitated, to yield his assent to a proposition unsupported by proof, or, at most,

This has been found to be the case with certain eminent names, on the subject of our present discussion. The vehemence of the controversies which have been carried on, respecting the operation of the Holy Spirit on the souls of believers, has frequently carried some of the disputants farther than they themselves intended. In the heat of argumentation they have asserted, that the action of the Holy Spirit, which operates in the faithful, is carried so far as to give them a degree of faith, superior to the reasons which they have for believing. When pressed by their adversaries, they ought to have acknowledged this to be one of the propositions which one is tempted to advance in the warmth of dispute, and which candour, without hesitation, is disposed to retract, after the heat is subsided. But this were a sacrifice too great for self-love to make: it is deemed better that religion should suffer from the intemperate zeal of the sophist, than that the sophist should correct his hasty position, by the illumination of religion.

Thus, in order to support one absurdity, a still greater absurdity has been advanced. It has been maintained, not only that the following proposition is true, namely, The impulse of the Holy Spirit gives us a faith superior to the reasons which we have for believing; but this is absolutely necessary; for, it has been alleged, that the Christian religion being destitute of proofs which enforce assent, all those who should refuse to believe what is destitute of this kind of proof, must, in so doing, refuse to believe the Christian religion.

God forbid that we should attempt to defend with weapons so empoisoned, the truths of religion! It was not thus that they were defended by Jesus Christ and his apostles. They called on men to believe, but they at the same time, adduced proof of what they wished to be received as the object of faith. The Spirit of God undoubtedly, operates on the soul of every one who implores his assistance, but it is by making them feel the force of the proofs, not by convincing them of what it is impossible to prove. And who could be condemned for not having believed, were Christianity destitute of sufficient proof? would not the infidel be warranted in alleging: "I am not to blame, if I withhold my assent to such a proposition: I do not feel that impulse which engages one to believe what cannot be proved?" But the notion which we have given of faith, confounds every one who refuses to believe. We say, with Jesus Christ of the unbelievers of his time: "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil," John iii. 19.

self: "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."

In strictness of speech, God will not proportion the celestial felicity, which he reserves for us, to the exertions which we make to attain it. Did God observe the rules of an exact distribution in this respect, there is not a single person in the world, who durst flatter himself with being a partaker in that felicity: because there is no one, I speak of even the greatest saints, who does all that he ought, and all that he might do, towards the attainment of it. Much more, supposing us to have done all that we could, and all that we ought to do, to be admitted to a participation in this blessedness, our utmost efforts never could bear any proportion to it. We must still say of every thing we undertake in order to salvation, what St. Paul says of the most cruel sufferings of the martyrs: "They are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us," Rom. viii. 18. The most extravagant thought, accordingly, that ever could find its way into the mind of man, is that of the persons who maintain the possibility of meriting heaven by their good works, nay, the possibility of a man's meriting the kingdom of heaven for others, after having earned it for himself.

But though there is not a proportion of rigorous justice, between the heavenly felicity, and the efforts which we make to attain it, there is a proportion of equity and of establishment. Permit me to explain what I mean by these words: God will not save mankind unless they exert themselves to obtain salvation. Had it been his will to extend indiscriminating favour, he had only to open, without reservation, the path to heaven; he had only to exert the supreme power, which he possesses over our souls, to infuse into them virtue and illumination, and to put us in possession of a felicity already completely acquired, without subjecting us to the necessity of employing indefatigable and unintermitting efforts, in order to our acquiring it. But his views respecting man are altogether different from this. Hence it is that he is pleased to represent the life of a Christian, as a narrow path, in which he must walk; as a race which he must run; as a task which he must perform; as a warfare which he has to accomplish. For this reason it is, that salvation is represented to us, as a victory to be won, as a prize to be gained, as a kingdom which can be taken only by the violent. God, then, has placed us in this world, as in a place of probation and sacrifice: it is his sovereign good pleasure, that the manner in which we correspond to his gracious views, shall decide our everlasting destination.

Let us apply this principle to the subject under discussion; to that obscure faith, which discerns, in the darkness of the past, those

facts on which the great truths of religion rest, as the building on its foundation; to that obscure faith, which penetrates into the darkness of futurity, there to discover the blessedness which religion proposes to us as the object of hope.

1. Let us apply the principle laid down, to that obscure faith, which discerns, in the darkness of the past, those facts on which the great truths of religion rest. There is more difficulty in attaining a discernment of the truth through the darkness of the past, than in beholding the object with a man's own eyes. It is admitted. Had Jesus Christ appeared alive to his judges and executioners, after his resurrection: were he to appear to us, at this day, as risen from the dead, we should have much less difficulty in believing the certainty of an event on which the whole Christian religion hinges. It is admitted. There would be no occasion, in order to attain the conviction of it, to employ extensive reading, to consult doctors, to surmount the trouble of profound meditation, to suspend pleasure, to interrupt business. It is admitted. But the very thing which constitutes your objection furnishes me with a reply. The trouble which you must take, before you can acquire conviction of the resurrection of the Saviour of the world, the extensive reading that is necessary, the consultation of learned men, those efforts of profound meditation which you must employ, that suspension of your pleasures, that interruption of your worldly business-all, all enter into the plan of your salvation: it is the will of God that you should exert yourselves diligently for the attainment of it.

Let us suppose the case of two Christians: the first shall be St. Thomas; the second a Christian of our own days. Let us suppose both the two equally convinced of the resurrection of the Saviour of the world; but acquiring their conviction in two different ways: Thomas convinced by the testimony of his senses; the modern Christian, by the attentive examination of the proofs which establish the truth of it: Whether of these two Christians, according to your judgment, expresses the greater love of the truth? Whether of these two Christians makes the greatest sacrifice in order to arrive at the knowledge of it? The one has only to open his eyes, the other must enter on a course of deep and serious reflection. The one has only to reach forth his hand, to touch the print of the wounds of Jesus Christ; the other must exert all the powers of his mind, in sifting the proofs, on which the doctrine is established. The one expects that the Saviour should present himself to him, and say, “Be not faithless but believing," John xx. 21. The other goes forth seeking after the Lord Jesus, through the darkness in which he is pleased to involve himself. Is it not evident that this last expresses incomparably greater love for the truth, and offers up to it greater sacrifices than the first? This last, then corresponds better to the idea of probation and sacrifice, to which we are called, during the time which, by the will of God, we are destined to pass in this world. Blessed therefore, with respect to the obscurity of the past, "blessed is he who has not seen, and yet has believed."