LECTURE X.

THE RELATION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE WORLD'S PROGRESS IN SCIENCE, CIVILIZATION, AND THE ARTS IN

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

IT has been remarked that " a system which would unite in one sublime synthesis all the past forms of human belief, which accepts with triumphant alacrity each new development of science, having no stereotyped standard to defend, and which represents the human mind as pursuing on the highest subjects a path of continual progress toward the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity, can never fail to exercise a powerful intellectual attraction."*

There is no doubt that the human mind desires such a system of religion; that it is endeavoring, in this age, in an eminent degree, to find it; that it will not be satisfied without such a system. In other words, it is undoubtedly true that a system of professedly revealed truth will not be received permanently by mankind unless it accords with this desire of the mind; unless it welcomes every new discovery in science, and each new invention in the arts; and unless it attaches itself to every thing that goes into the real civilization and progress of the world. To find, or to found such a system, is the present effort of Rationalism, and it is a fair question whether Christianity so meets and satisfies this demand of the human mind that it will continue to keep its place as the world makes advances.

* History of Rationalism in Europe, by W. E. H. Lecky, vol. i., p. 182.

The closing Lecture in this course will be designed, in some measure, to answer this question-a question which the world has a right to ask, and which we are bound to answer a question on the solution of which the reception of what is otherwise adduced as evidence of the divine origin of the Christian religion will in a very material degree depend. The argument in the Lecture will be founded on the idea that a system originated long since-eighteen hundred years ago—which will meet the condition of all future ages; which began ahead of the world, and which keeps itself abreast or ahead of the world, must be from God. It is capable of easy demonstration that there is no such system unless it be Christianity.

It was assumed, of necessity, by Christianity, that it had truths to disclose of great importance to mankind, which the race, at the time when it was revealed, had been unable to discover.* Man had, indeed, made great progress in science, in civilization, and in art. The best talent in the world had been employed in investigating the works of nature, and in inquiring into the relations of man to the Creator and to another state of being. When Paul stood on Mars' Hill, he was, in respect to all that contributes to human comfort, and that marks the progress of the race, almost in a different world from what one would have been in the rude age of Tubal Cain, Jabal, and Jubal. A period of four thousand years had elapsed since the creation, and all that man had accumulated on the subjects of religion, philosophy, and the arts had culminated in Greece, and was represented by the objects around him, and by the men that stood before him. The experiment, continued for so long a time, and under such circumstances, whether man could * 1 Cor., i., 2.

find out the knowledge of God and a way of salvation, might be regarded as having been fairly made. If it had been submitted to man himself to designate a sufficient time to make the experiment, he himself would admit that four thousand years must be regarded as ample for the trial; if it were submitted to him to select the circumstances under which the trial could best be made, he could hardly imagine, as I have endeavored to show in a former Lecture, that the trial could have been better made than in Greece. Yet, after that experiment had been thus made, the Gospel claimed to have truths indispensable to mankind far in advance of all that man had been able to discover, and which it was assumed could not be discovered by the unaided human powers. The fact that it had such truths, and that it answered questions which had been propounded by Greek philosophers, but for which no answer had been found, will not be disputed even by those who endeavor to explain the Gospel on some other supposition than that it is a revelation from heaven. It is claimed to be a fact by all who believe that Christianity is a revelation from God; it is shown to be a fact by the progress which the race has made under that new system as compared with its progress under the influence of the Grecian philosophy.

Eighteen hundred years have passed away, and during that period the race, in science, civilization, and the arts, has made advances far more rapid than in any eighteen centuries before, or than in all those four thousand years. The world is, in most important respects, a different world from what it was in the days of Pericles and Plato. The telescope has extended its boundaries indefinitely in one direction, and the microscope in the other. Science is a different thing now

from what it was then; civilization is different; art is different. Our houses are different; our domestic arrangements are different; our facilities for passing from place to place, by land or sea, are different; our knowledge of distant lands and oceans is different; our means of recording, transmitting, and perpetuating truth are different; our knowledge of the substances which compose our globe is different; our knowledge of the world's history before man appeared on it is different; our means of cultivating the fields, and of conducting the operations of commerce, are different. Except in architecture and sculpture, there is nothing in respect to which the world is not now immeasurably in advance of what it was in the best days of Greece. A Greek of the age of Pericles would be lost now in the arrangements of civilization around him, not less than one of the age of Tubal Cain would have been if suddenly translated to Athens. We use no Greek plows in our fields; no Greek chariots in our wars or on our journeys; no Greek implements in preparing our food, in writing our books, in transmitting intelligence from place to place; no Greek weapons of war; no Greek ships in battle. We make no use in our schools of their treatises on natural history, astronomy, medicine, scarcely in mental philosophy; nor do we copy their style of domestic architecture, or refer to them for instruction in the mechanic arts. We are in a different world from what the ancient Greek was, and it might be interesting to speculate how long it would take Pericles or Plato to learn to act, and move, and speak, and live in our age.

It is a fair question whether, admitting that Christianity was in advance of the world at the time when it was communicated to men, it still holds the same

relative position? Is it still ahead of the world? Is it abreast of it? Or has it fallen in the rear? Has it been superseded by the discoveries which men have made in science; by the progress of civilization; by the advances in the arts? Has the world reached a point where it can "get along" without the Gospel? Have the powers of the human mind been so developed during these eighteen hundred years that man can now successfully grapple with questions which were too difficult for even the cultivated mind of Greece; and have the secrets of nature been so explored that the knowledge which she has to impart to man, and which eluded the inquiries in the academy, the porch, or the lyceum, can now be found in the laboratory or the observatory? Or, to put the question in a form more favorable to Christianity, and in a form in which its friends would demand that it should be put: Has Christianity itself been an important element in the progress which the race has made, and are the institutions of the present time-the forms of civilization, the advances in the arts and the comforts of life, to be traced so far to Christianity that it may claim that it has been among the direct causes in effecting these changes? If it be assumed or conceded that this is so, then, also, it may be fairly asked whether it has not done its work, and may not now be dispensed with in the farther progress of the race, and whether it is not now to take its place with the systems adapted to a ruder age, which passed away when the results had become incorporated in permanent institutions, or when they had been superseded by better systems.

These are questions which would be suggested by certain forms of skepticism different from those of ancient times, but which are likely to become the forms