branches of human duty were "love to God and love to our neighbour." That God required a spiritual service, and purity of heart, as well as outward profession and moral conduct. He inculcated the necessity of faith, humility, temperance, devotion, and resignation to God's will; and of integrity, mercy, charity, kindly affection and brotherly love towards our fellow-men. He asserted most positively that there would be a future eternal state of existence; and a general judgment by which all mankind would be sentenced to eternal happiness or misery, according to their deeds.

In proof of his divine mission, and of the truth of his doctrines, he publicly performed most astonishing miracles. By His word alone He cured instantaneously all manner of diseases; made the blind to see; the deaf to hear; the lame to walk. He calmed the winds and waves, and restored the dead to life. He plainly manifested His knowledge of the thoughts of men's hearts, and of the events of futurity. Though doing all this, He lived without any outward state or splendour, having no fixed abode, save at the house of Peter, a fisherman, one of His apostles.

When in the course of His ministry (which probably continued about three years) He had fully taught and confirmed His religion; and shewn an

F

example of it by a life of piety and holiness; He prepared to complete the work of redemption by the sacrifice of Himself. After instituting the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to be a perpetual commemoration of that event, He permitted Himself to be betrayed by Judas (one of His Apostles); to be dragged bound before the High-Priest and Jewish Sanhedrim; to be there falsely accused, and pronounced to be guilty of death as a blasphemer, because He had proclaimed Himself to be (as He really was)" the Son of God."

Having been treated with the greatest cruelty and indignity, He was carried before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, to have the sentence of death confirmed (the Jews not then having the power of life and death). Pilate was prevailed upon by their importunity, and contrary to his own conviction of Christ's innocence, to condemn Him to be crucified. This was immediately done; and He was crucified between two thieves; thus making an atonement by His blood for the sins of the whole world.

At the moment He expired the veil of the Temple was rent in twain; the earth did quake; the rocks rent; graves were opened; and many bodies of saints which slept arose. Though it was the sixth hour (or mid-day) there was a darkness over all the

earth, till the ninth hour*; nature herself thus proclaiming Him to be indeed" the Son of God."

Joseph of Arimathea, one of His disciples, begged of Pilate the dead body of Jesus, and laid it in a tomb; which to prevent deception was secured by a large stone being rolled to its mouth and sealed, and by a strict guard of Roman soldiers †.

On the third day after His crucifixion and burial, Jesus arose and shewed Himself alive to His disciples, by many infallible proofs, such as conversing with them, directing them to touch His body, eating and drinking with them ‡, &c. He gave His Apostles a commission to propagate His religion among all nations, and to admit them into His Church by the rite of baptism §. And after forty days He was visibly taken from amongst them, on the hill of Bethany, and ascended up into heaven ||.

Ten days after this, at the feast of Pentecost, the Holy Ghost descended visibly upon the twelve Apostles ¶, and enabled them to speak in different languages ** and perform miracles. By these means they were empowered to preach the Gospel with

* Matt. xxvii. Luke xxiii.

Luke xxiv. 36–44.

+ Matt. xxvii.

§ Matt. xxviii. 19.

Acts i. 9.

In the interval between the ascension of Christ and this descent

of the Spirit, Matthias had been solemnly admitted into the place of the traitorous Apostle Judas, who had hanged himself.

** Acts ii. 4.

powerful and convincing demonstration to the different nations of the earth.

Commencing at Jerusalem, they preached the doctrine of "Christ crucified" being the " power of God unto salvation." By the force of their reasoning, proving from the prophecies of Scripture Jesus to be the Messiah, and confirming their teaching by signs and wonders, they converted multitudes to the faith. In spite of repeated and severe persecutions on the part of the Jews, being supported by the influence of the Holy Spirit, and encouraged by many extraordinary providential interpositions and deliverances from danger, they continued to speak the word of God with boldness, and to add daily numbers of believers to the Church of Christ.

During the first eight years, however, their preaching was confined to the Jews alone. At that time a special divine revelation was made to St. Peter, declaring the admissibility of the Gentile world into the Christian covenant *. Cornelius of Antioch was the first Gentile convert; and the Lord Jesus miraculously appearing to Paul, and converting him from a furious persecutor of Christianity, into a true believer and zealous preacher of the Gospel, appointed him more especially as the Apostle to the Gentiles t.

* Acts x.

† Acts ix.

So rapidly and widely did the Gospel spread, that within thirty years after our Saviour's ascension, Christian Churches were founded not only throughout Judæa and its adjacent parts, but also in Cyprus, Crete, Greece, Italy, and many countries of Asia Minor. At this period the New Testament History terminates.

It must be remembered that this history was written by persons contemporary with the facts it records, as is proved by an unbroken series of writers from the time of the Evangelists to the present day; that no unbeliever in any age could ever disprove these facts; or in the ages nearest to the apostolic one (and therefore best suited to detect error if there had been any) ever so much as attempted to disprove them. Hence the circumstances of the conception of Jesus, His birth, family, life, sufferings, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension, all corresponding exactly with the predictions of the ancient prophets, demonstrate Him to be the Messiah foretold in the Old Testament. Hence His wondrous miracles and sublime and pure doctrine proclaim His divine mission. And hence also His predictions concerning His own death and resurrection; the descent of the Holy Ghost; the spread of His Gospel; the destruction of Jerusalem; and the events that have been already completed, and that