In the first place, I would remark that those who honestly disbelieve in Christianity are ignorant of the actual nature of that religion. They have either mistaken its accidents for its essence, or they have accepted for a portrait what is only a caricature. Like Strauss, perhaps, they imagine that it is opposed to industry and commerce; or, like Swinburne, that it is synonymous with priestcraft; or, like James Mill, that it is but another name for Calvinism. The Saviour has been injured far more by unconscious misrepresentations than by any openly avowed hostility. He Himself foretold that there would arise false teachers, and that they would deceive many. His prophecy has been strangely, sadly fulfilled. All kinds of absurdities and blasphemies have been shouted forth by persons suffering under the mad delusion that they were preaching the gospel. There have been men calling themselves Christians, who have said that the sweetest music of heaven would be the wailings of the lost in hell. There have been men calling themselves Christians, who have maintained that God created the vast majority of mankind for the express purpose of consigning them to everlasting flames, in order that He might be, as they strangely term it, glorified. There have

been men calling themselves Christians, whose religion has consisted in breaking on the wheel or burning at the stake those who differed, on certain doctrinal points, from themselves. There have been men calling themselves Christians, who have asserted that the grossest sins they might please to commit, after what they dignified with the name of conversion, would be matters of the most perfect indifference. There have been men calling themselves Christians, who were remarkable for nothing save the conceited ignorance of the bigot, the Satanic fury of the persecutor, the childish puerilities of the formalist, or the sickening cant of the hypocrite. Now, so long as any one believes that such men are the genuine representatives of the teaching of Christ, he cannot be censured for refusing to call himself a Christian. You remember in Goethe's wonderful drama, when Marguerite makes anxious inquiries about Faust's theological opinions, he tells her he cannot accept any of the religions with which he is acquainted. She asks him why. He answers, "Even from religiousness;" meaning that these religions appeared to him, rightly or wrongly, to violate what he believed to be eternally sacred moral principles. All honour to the men who refuse

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to accept a blasphemous representation of the Deity! Such men, when they come to know the real Christ, will be among His most zealous disciples. Already they

"Adore and worship when they know it not;

Pious beyond the intention of their thought,
Devout beyond the meaning of their will."

Whenever Christ has been understood, He has been invariably admired, and more or less believed in, if not loved. In a former sermon I mentioned the names of a number of illustrious men who had all testified enthusiastic admiration for Jesus of Nazareth; and I gave you some examples of the terms in which they had spoken of Him. Christ has been eulogised not only by those who profess to be entirely consecrated to His service, not only by the ignorant and unlettered, who might possibly be the slaves of an unreasoning fanaticism,—but nearly all the greatest minds of the last eighteen hundred years, though holding the most divergent religious opinions, and differing in regard to almost every other subject on which they wrote, have been unanimous in their praise of Jesus. Whenever men have caught a glimpse of the real Christ, they have invariably felt drawn to Him by an irresistible fascination. No one, except

through ignorance or misconception, has ever formed any but the highest estimate of the Saviour's character and work.

In the second place, I would remark that Christ and His Gospel are inextricably bound up with the future progress of the world. This has been acknowledged over and over again by men belonging to the strictest school of literary and historical criticism. For example, in a paper read some years ago before the Institute of France, M. Troplong said, "Christian philosophy lies at the root of our principles of right." M. Renan, too, has declared that "to tear the name of Jesus from the world would be to shake it to its very foundations." That this is no rhetorical exaggeration, but mere sober fact, you may see if you will call to mind the moral reformations and the social improvements which can be indisputably traced to the teaching of the Nazarene. The poet from whom I just now quoted speaks as if Christ had accomplished nothing.

"The nineteenth wave of the ages rolls

Now deathward since His death and birth.
Has He fed full men's starved-out souls?
Has He brought freedom upon earth?

Or are there less oppressions done

On this wild world beneath the sun?"

Nothing but the most bitter prejudice could

lead an educated man to speak like this. The world is resonant with voices that contradict him, if he would but unstop his ears. Think first of the wonderful influence Christ has exerted upon individual lives. It is a fact, not less certain than any in the physical sciences, that the story of His self-sacrificing love has purified some of the vilest hearts, and brought many of the most abandoned of the devil's votaries to the very feet of God. It is a fact, which no one can even hesitate to admit, that He has inspired vast numbers of His followers with such a passionate devotion, that they have for His sake endured the loss of all things, and have counted it all joy that they were thought worthy to suffer shame for Christ. It is a fact no less incontrovertible, that a yet vaster company-"a multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," though coming short of entire self-surrender, have yet loved and served Him to the best of their ability, faithfully though fitfully; sometimes forsaking Him, yet always returning to Him again. Moreover, there are many who have caught something of His own divine spirit of self-abnegation, and who know not, or scarcely know, from whence it comes. Of all the best and noblest men now living,