competent to prove the reality of the greatest miracle that ever was performed.

Besides a multitude of other persons who were eye witnesses to these miracles and who were actually convinced and converted by them, there were twelve persons called Apostles, plain, honest, unprejudiced men, whom our Saviour chose to be his constant companions and friends, who were almost always about his person, accompanied him in his trav els, heard all his dicourses, saw all his miracles, and attended him through all the different scenes of his life, death, and resurrection, till the time of his ascension, into heaven. These persons were perfectly capable of judging whether the works which they saw Jesus perform were real miracles or not; they could tell whether a person whom they had known to be blind all his life was suddenly restored to sight by our Saviour's only speaking a word or touch

ing his eyes; they could tell whether he did actually, in open day light walk upon the sea without sinking, and without any vissible support; whether a person called Lazarus, whom they were well acquainted with, and whom they knew to have been four days dead and buried, was raised to life again merely by Christ's saying, Lazarus, arise.

In these and other facts of this sort, they could not possibly be deceived. Now these, and many other miracles equally astonishing, they affirm that they themselves actually saw performed by our Saviour. In consequence of this, from being Jews, and of course strongly prejudiced against Christ and his outward appearance, which was the very reverse of every thing they expected in their Messiah, they became his disciples; and on account of their conversion, and more particularly on account of their asserting the truth of his miracles and his

resurrection, they endured for a long course of years the severest labors, hardships, sufferings, and persecution, that human nature could be exposed to, and at last submitted to the most cruel and excruciating deaths; all which they might easily have avoided, if they would only have said that Christ was not the Son of God, that he never worked any miracles, and never rose from the dead. Yet this they refused to say, and were content to die rather than say it.*

Is not this giving the strongest proof of their sincerity, and of the reality of Christ's miracles, that human nature and human testimony are capable of giving? The concurrent and uncontradicted testimony of twelve such witnesses is, according to all the rules of

* No man ever laid down his life for the honor of Jupiter, Neptune, or Apollo; but how many thousands have sealed their Christian testimony with their blood? Beattie, v. 2.

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evidence, sufficient to establish the truth of any one fact in the world, however extraordinary, however miraculous.

If there had been any powerful temptation thrown in the way of these men; if they had been bribed, like the followers of Mahomet, with sensual indulgencies; or, like Judas Iscariot, with a sum of money, one should not have been much surprised at their persisting, for a time at least, in a premeditated falsehood. But when we know that, instead of any of these allurements being held out to them, their Master always foretold to them, and they themselves soon found by experience, that they could gain nothing, and must lose every thing in this world, by embracing Christianity; it is utterly impossible to account for their embracing it on any other ground than their conviction of its truth from the miracles which they saw. In fact, must they not have been

absolutely mad to have incurred voluntarily so much misery, and such certain destruction, for affirming things to be true which they knew to be false; more especially as their own religion taught them, that they would be punished most severely in another world, as well as in this, for so wicked a fraud? Is it usual for men thus to sport with their own happiness, and their very lives, and to bring upon themselves, with their eyes open, such dreadful evils, without any reason in the world, and without the least possible benefit, advantage, credit, or pleasure resulting from it? Where have you ever heard of any instance of this sort? Would any twelve men you ever knew, especially men of credit and character, take it into their heads to assert that a certain person in the neighborhood raised a dead man to life, when they knew that no such thing had ever happened; and that they would all, with