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Nor is it a little thing that our missionaries go daily forth with no other arms than those of persuasion, and not only preserve the emigrants of our own land from degenerating to the standard of new settlements, but either reclaim wild races to a purer faith and to the arts of civilisation, or at least put forth the most energetic of all influences employed in such a direction. The same love of mankind in the fear of our common God which sends our missionaries on such a task, both animates Thousands at home, who contribute to the support of such missions and pray for them, and it also imbues our legislation with a care for the rights even of races most alien to ourselves. There is no tribe so outcast on any shore of the world, but if wrong done to it by British subjects is brought to our knowledge at home, the Christian spirit of the country comes to the aid of the oppressed, and advocates in our senate are found to plead, often M. P. 35 546 ARGUMENT FROM EXPERIENCE* even our fleets go forth to vindicate, their cause. Was there ever any country, in which so generous and disinterested a zeal was felt, as is now shewn in Great Britain, for the holy cause of humanity, whether concerned in the independence of nations, or attacked by despotism, or outraged in the case of the negroes, and the Pariahs of mankind ? I know of none : and this prac- tical spirit has its life in tlie faith of Christ, who died for all men, and brought us to one God and Father of all. For this reason I think that the Governor of the world gave into the hands of our Sovereign the sceptre of India; and in such a belief we have spoken to you to-day, not exaggerating our cause, as if we would use arguments to you which might not be re- peated in the face of nations, but as soldiers of the truth, inviting you to lay hold of it, and to find rest for your souls, which are wearied with wandering on a sea of doubt. Here let me remark, that the good fimits of our faith are most eminently seen, where no earthly force binds or distorts the heavenly vine. Some men, because they think the form of our religion good, would force it on others by any means that come to hand. But it is not the nature of faith which lays hold on truth, to be propagated for good by any unworthy means. Truth flourishes best in her native air of freedom : and while the heart of man, which is the prize slie strives for in order to lay it at the feet of Gk)d, turns aside from deceit, and resists compulsion, she only desires to be fairly presented to it, that she may win its love with a power of persuasion stronger than force. For so the breathing of the God of all comfort runs along with weapons of peace ; and Not bg might or by power, hut ly My spirit, aaith the Lord of haatSy the battle of the faith is won against evil in the world. Nor yet is it any detriment to the triumphs of the Cross of Christ, that they go along with the growth of intelligence, and the deve- lopment of free humanity; for I all along maintain that the God who doeth wonders in the deep, which men behold who go down to the sea in ships, is the same God who work- eth great marvels in tlie realm of feeling and thought. All LAW OP MORAL CAUSATION. FRUIT AND TREE! 647 Nature*, in the lap of which we are fearftilly and wonderfully made, is a manifestation of the same Lord, by whose marvellous grace our souls are saved. " You who pride yourselves on the study of causation, are not xmaware that even the least thing has some cause; or, if Sad4nanda prefers it, I will say, some source. Now certainly the effects of Christianity in the world have been important enough to require some very eminent cause ; and since they are altogether good, so far as they come of the thing of itself and not of collateral impediments, I do not see what other cause they could have but the fountain of all goodness, or the will of God. So that the origin of Christianity appears Divine. This might be more proved, if we considered the shortcomings of those who have not reached it, and the inability of men who fell from it to build up anything so good. All moralists or philoso- phers allow, that prayer to one eternal and life-giving Spirit is better than idolatry ; that sacrifice of the mind and being, either in bearing or forbearing, is better than shedding animal blood; that belief in the great brotherhood of mankind is a more holy thing than license of tyranny or rapine ; and that the household and social virtues which the faith of Christ requires and brings forth and consecrates, are far happier than licentiousness. Yet men who fall from Christianity now, whether philosophers or simple, are not able to devise a religion which shall preserve society from that darker side of things which they confess to be worse ; and those worse things are just the vices by which older nations, who knew not Christianity, were too commonly stained. Does it not follow, then, that whatever preserves human nature in practice from what we confess abhorrent to our better nature, must have been designed by the Grod of our nature as the ele- ment of preserving or restoring it. Such a moral argument may be said to commend the sentiments of Christianity to our faith, rather than prove its facts to our belief. Let those who say so, * See Psalms xxiv. 1—3, xix. i — 14, the Epistle to the Komaiis, and St Paul's speech at Athens. 35—2 548 ' FAITH SPIRITUAL, BELIEF HISTORICAL. exhibit the sentiments on a large scale, without aid of the &cts. But what God has joined in history, we are not well able to put asunder in theory. Still less can we do so, because our practice, which has comparative praise, hangs upon our theory, or rather upon our faith; and this faith is connected with a belief in histori- cal facts, which form partly its groundwork, and are altogether its most triumphant exemplification. Beyond controversy, the Christian life is built up with a faith in a life to come for each soul hereafter; and though such faith may be, as I think, an instinct of our highest reason, it comes out brighter in the light shed upon it by the rising of our great Bepresentative and Deli- verer from the grave. If a man was in prison, and had dim hopes of release, his hope would be infinitely strengthened by hearing of One who had been before Him in the same bonds, and had gone forth by might, and acquired power to come again, and to rescue with authority every wearer of the chains which He had learnt to pity by feeling them. So the history of Christ, as told in the Gospels, falls in naturally with the stronger as- siLrance of Christians in a faith, which yet others, such as your- selves, may in a measure feel. *' But thirdly, as the faith .of Christ has, in the answer of our highest conscience to its truth, and in the exemplification of its effects in history, two strong arguments for its origin being Divine, so it has a third, and a more tangible one, in the super- natural manner of its coming into the world. To most Chris- tians indeed this third proof appears in theory the strongest, and they would call it the only trustworthy one ; but I suspect that in reality they are more swayed than they are themselves aware^ by the first, or by the witness of their conscience, and by the holy breath of Grod quickening their better affections. Nothing is more usual, especially in religion, than for men, little accus- tomed to self-analysis, to put forward as their strongest reasoDS those by which they are not at bottom most profoundly swayed. Still to any man who finds the working of the faith of Christ in his own life, and in that of others, Divine, it affords a gratifying DIRECT SIGNS OF SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN. 549 confirmation to learn that the preparation for Christ's coming was marked by Divine forethought, and that His works in the flesh were signs of Divine power and goodness. Again, those who are dull of faith, and slow to feel the Holy Spirit quicken- ing them now, may be awakened to a sense of the blessings offered them, and the danger of rejecting them, by learning with what supernatural signs of a Divine mission the Almighty was pleased to sanction the appearance of His Word made man.