In short, we demand one thing. Where is the infidel publication which is calm, well-reasoned, placed on fair grounds of historical fact, proposed with the modesty and fear which the awful responsibility involved demands? Where is the manly, upright, serious treatise, bearing the marks of a sincere, a devout, and an unprejudiced inquirer? I know

not one.

The only relief to the benevolent mind, amidst such a mass of moral evil, is to turn to the useful labors and meritorious and able writings of sincere Christians. What do they propose to themselves? What public undertakings do they engage in? What kind of efforts do they sustain for the mere good of others, and in obedience to their Saviour's commands? What probability is there, that they have truth on their side in what they do? These are the questions we propose.

I

I appeal to every one competent to form a judgment. say, every true, spiritual Christian is the cheerful servant of his fellow-creatures. I say, he not only sustains the principles of religion and morals; that he not only performs the ordinary obligations resulting from them; that he not only is animated with the purest spirit of benevolence; but that his life is a life of labor for the good of others: he has a principle of effort and active duty implanted in his breast, which shrinks from no difficulties, refuses no exertion, yields to no discouragements in a good cause. In what department of human life, is not the sincere Christian foremost, prompt, persevering, in planning and executing schemes of beneficence and charity?

Take the ministers of religion, those who are real Christians in heart, (for we own no others,) what, I ask, has been their course of effort in every age since the propagation of Christianity? What their inextinguishable zeal for the present and future welfare of mankind? What their laborious and ceaseless exertions?

Consider the different classes of Christians. Take the missionary who, like Swartz, to whom we before referred, or Zeigenbald, or Brainerd, or Eliot, or Gericke, or Clau

dius Buchanan, or Martyn, have in silent and unobserved and distant labors, spent an useful and honorable life.

Observe the sincere Christians who are engaged in various professions, or occupied in commercial pursuits-what are the extensive schemes which they form to make their secular subserve their religious duties-to make their profession or their commerce a channel of communicating spiritual blessings?

Scrutinize again the individual believer in the more retired orders of Christian society-the female sex, the various descriptions of domestic servants, in their private, but assiduous diligence, beyond and beside their immediate duties, for promoting the glory of God and the happiness of mankind. The female character, elevated and refined by Christianity, is not only preserved from debasement by the purity of the Christian precepts, but is animated to patient and humble, though retired, efforts to advance the highest interests of humanity.

Christianity is all effort and activity for the good of others. The believer loves his neighbor as himself.

And why should I contrast the WRITINGS of the true followers of Christianity, with the disgusting picture which truth has compelled me to draw of the infidel publications? Why should I oppose the HUMILITY of the Christian writer, with the egotism of the infidel? Why contrast his SELFRENUNCIATION and conscious unworthiness and PURSUIT of THE SOLE GLORY OF HIS GOD AND SAVIOUR, with the vanity and love of fame of the infidel? Why should I set off his BENIGNITY AND KINDNESS AND OPENNESS TO CONVICTION, AND FREEDOM FROM PERSONAR FEELINGS, with the malignity and rancor of the unbeliever? What avails my bringing into contrast the regard to truth, the plain research for matters of fact, the piety and awe at the name of God and reverence of his majesty, which pervade the Christian writings, with the false and impious and contemptuous spirit of infidels? Why should I fatigue you by detailing the strong moral distinctions between virtue and vice, in all their ramifications, which mark the Christian treatises, and the pernicious confusion of right and wrong which prevails

in the infidel? No; I will not pursue the contrast, I will not darken the charges of dishonest quotation, insidious and cowardly methods of attack, and impurity of description and language, brought so justly against infidelity, by dwelling in this place on the historical testimonies and uncontroverted facts on which the Christian cause rests; on the open, manly, uncompromising fortitude which it displays; and the unsullied purity and delicacy of all its precepts and tendencies. All these things are too well known.

But I ask how is it that Christian writers are so full, so manly, so laborious in the positive exhibition of the doctrines and precepts of their religion, when nothing of the sort can be shown in the writings of infidels as to the system of natural duty which they profess to defend? Where are the writings, on the unbeliever's part, which answer to our Christian fathers, to our commentators, to our ecclesiastical histories, to our moral essays, to our volumes of sermons, to our bodies of divinity? Where are any writers, on their professed scheme of religion, which answer to our Cyprian, our Chrysostom, our St. Austin, our Bernard? Where to our Hooker, our Jewel, our Luther, our Melancthon, our Pascal, our Sir Isaac Newton, our Bishop Pearson, our Baxter, our Archbishop Leighton, our Bishop Hall, our Doddridge? A death-like silence prevails. I can find no one Christian book that does not partake of the essential moral elements of truth, purity, and sincerity; and no one infidel writing that does. No. It is unnecessary for me to sum up this second head. I content myself with appealing to every conscience, whether our argument does not strengthen as we proceed-whether, in point of public labor and writings, Christianity does not bear as prominently the seal of truth and God and heaven upon it, as infidelity does that of falsehood and of the rebellious spirits of darkness? I ask, whether, after having shown the futility of the objections of infidelity in themselves, we do not seem to have completed the overthrow, by exhibiting the deliberate aim of those who framed them? I ask, whether objections are worth considering which must be culled out from the dis

honesty, egotism, malignity, and moral pollution, of the works in which they are buried?

But an additional fact will raise this whole branch of proof to a yet higher point. In numerous cases, all these excellencies of the Christian character have been the result of a DECIDED CONVERSION FROM THE VERY INFIDELITY which lies on the other side of our contrast. Multitudes of these Christians, whose principles, moral conduct, benevolence, and useful writings we have been considering, were once enemies of Christianity, vain, perverse, arrogant, debased, profligate; but they were brought to considerationthey were led to examine, (as I have mentioned in the case of Mr. Boyle,) the question of Christianity with calmness. The result was an entire change from the degradation and vices of infidelity, to the elevation and purity of the Christian faith. They proclaim the alteration. They confess with grief the motives which dictated their former rebellion; they distinctly avow the source of their errors and guilt; they open to us the real cause of the objections of infidelity. Thus the camp of the enemy betrays itself. The Christian advocate, like Augustine in the fourth century, is brought out from the midst of its foes; and we have the singular advantage of knowing the ground on which infidels, continuing such, stand, by the ground on which the Christian convert confesses he once stood himself.

Infidelity has nothing to show of a kind similar to this. Where are her converts from among devout and serious Christians? Where are those who confess the guilt of believing the revelation of the Bible? Where are the regrets and penitence for having obeyed the gospel? All is a blank. Infidelity and her objections, are DISOBEDIENCE: faith, with her solid fruits, is OBEDIENCE to the great God and Father of all.

But I hasten to the last division of our contrast.

III. THEIR DEATHS AND PREPARATION FOR AN ETERNAL STATE OF BEING.

And here the interval widens: the gloom deepens even to darkness on the one side, whilst the light breaks forth into splendor on the other. Whatever contrast there may be

between the two classes, as to their principles, their general conduct, their benevolence, their public labors and writings, this contrast is immeasurably more awful as we view them as to their approach toward death, and their preparation for eternity.

What, then, is the death-bed of the unbeliever? What is he engaged in at this solemn season? How does his conscience respond to the inquiry, "Have I been seeking truth?" Alas! the thick obscurity of the scene too surely portends what is beyond! For of whatever particular description be his death, it gives a loud and clear testimony against the objections he has been relying on-they condemn, they desert, they betray him at last.

Whether we look to the confessions and regret of some infidels in the article of death-the obduracy and insensibility of others—the pride and presumption of a third class— the carelessness and levity which mark a fourth-the rage and despair by which others are rendered awfully conspicuous; or the self-destruction by which so great a number fall; whatever cases we select and contrast with the circumstances of the dying Christian-all, all proclaim that infidelity is rebellion against the God of heaven, and that her objections are the mere foaming and boiling over of man's inbred corruptions; whilst truth and holiness and the attestations of God, in his moral government, are on the side of Christianity.

1. Notice the REGRET AND CONFESSIONS of the awakened infidel on his death-bed. I hear Burnet's convert" acknowledge that the real source and spring of his unbelief, was a space of five years spent in profligacy-that his vices had led him to seek a miserable refuge in infidelity and presumption. I hear many of the culprits, who have been doomed to expiate their crimes against society by an ignominious death, own and lament their infidel principles, as the first cause of the deeds for which they suffered." What

(n) Lord Rochester.

(0) I have in my possession a letter from the chaplain, who attended the conspirators against the lives of his Majesty's ministers, in 1809, known by the name of the Cato-street conspirators, which informed me that all the leading criminals were avow ed infidels.