there is an honesty about every relation which cannot be mistaken or suspected. And we see and feel, too, that the chief personage of the history is not brought out into such entire relief, into such a concentration of light, by any effort or design on the part of the writer, but only and wholly on account of the unapproached sublimity and intrinsic superiority of the character itself.

There is one other circumstance in the lives of the apostles which I am bound to notice for the sake of its singularity and importance; and then I will leave them to the meditations and further inquiries of my readers. I have several times had occasion to speak of the national prejudices of these men, and the difficulty which they had to comprehend the entire spirituality of their Master's system and kingdom, and to admit into their associations with the Jewish Messiah and Saviour the ideas of poverty, lowliness, suffering, and death. Attached as they were to him by all the ties which we have enumerated, we see that when he was actually apprehended by his enemies, they all forsook him and fled; that they did not return to him; and that on the mount where he was crucified there was but one of them who appeared to witness the death of their Master and kinsman, and the extinction of all their hopes. The event was one

for which they were wholly unprepared. It confounded them. Their preconceived opinions were so strong, that when Jesus had before spoken to them of his death, they shut up their ears and their eyes, they would not understand him. We do not find a single hint in the Gospels that they ever did understand him. The event itself was a blow which at once enlightened and convinced them, and scattered them abroad also, like sheep without a shepherd. This is one scene.

And now let us behold another, which immediately succeeds it. Not a great many days elapse when we find these very men, disheartened, disappointed, terrified, and dispersed as they had been, all gathered together again with one accord, fully recovered from all their depression, and with a settled resolution stamped on all their demeanor, which never marked them before, even while their Master was with them, to lead, combine, and encourage them. The catalogue of their names is full, with one vacancy only, which they immediately supply. They begin to preach the doctrines of a crucified Saviour, and we hear no more of their earthly notions of his kingdom. Their crude ideas and temporal hopes have, in a few days, vanished away. They preach Christianity, simply and purely. They gather to themselves thousands of converts. They are persecuted, imprisoned,

threatened; they behold one of their number soon cut off with the sword; they are surrounded by enemies and temptations; and yet they never hesitate nor falter; no, not the weakest of them; there is not a single defection from their reunited brotherhood. They go through country after country, and toil after toil, laying down their lives, one after another, for the holy truth, and they leave disciples behind them everywhere, to teach, and dare, and suffer, and do, and die, as they did.

Now what is the cause of all this, and how is it to be accounted for? Unbelievers may have many explanations to give, and they may be ingenious ones. I have but one, and it is a simple one. It is, that their crucified Master rose from the dead as they have told us he did; that he instructed them as they have told us he did; and that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, was sent from the Father, according to his promise, to enlighten and sustain them. In short, I consider the conduct of the apostles, at and after the death of Jesus, as perhaps the strongest proof of the reality of his glorious resurrection. If he rose from the dead and appeared to them, and instructed and confirmed them, I can account for the sudden change in their characters, and for their subsequent knowledge and perseverance and boldness and success. If he rose not from

the dead, I cannot account for those things; and the whole subject remains to me a deep historical mystery.

Simple, honest, excellent men! raised up by Providence for wonderful ends by wonderful means! Your lives, unadorned as they are, and comprehended in a few plain words, are yet alone among the lives of men, -alone in the varieties and contrasts of their fortunes, alone in the multitude and importance of their consequences. We should be senseless if we did not perceive the influence which you have exerted on the character and opinions of mankind. We should be thankless if we did not acknowledge the benefits of that influence, and bless God that we live to know and feel them. And we humbly pray to God, the universal Father, the Source of all excellence and truth, that our fidelity to our common Master may be like yours; that our perseverance in executing his commands may be like yours; and that like yours may be our courage and constancy, if we should ever be called on to sacrifice comfort, worldly consideration, or life itself, to duty, conscience, and faith.

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