s, and priests, emperors, and philosophers of the first
centuries, who had the best opportunity of proving their falsehood, were
unable to do so. The persecutors and apostates, whose malice against the
Church knew no bounds, never dared to utter a charge of deception
against the apostles. Why, then, you ask, did they not all become
Christians? Because miracles can not convert any man against his will.
Christianity is not merely a belief in miracles, but the love of Christ,
and a life of holiness. There are many readers of this book who would
not turn from their sins if all the dead in Spring Grove Cemetery would
rise to-morrow to warn them from hell. God does not intend to force any
man to become a Christian. He just gives evidence enough to try you,
whether you will deal honestly and fairly with your own soul and your
God, and if you are determined to hate Christ and his holy religion, you
shall never want a plausible excuse for unbelief; as it is written,
"Unto them which are disobedient, Christ is a stone of stumbling and a
rock of offense." These ancient enemies of Christ acknowledged the
reality of his miracles, but attributed them to magical power, or the
help of Satan. The Jews said that he had acquired the power of miracles
by learning to pronounce the incommunicable name of God. Modern Infidels
deny all his miracles save the greatest--the turning of men from their
sins. They can not deny that; they can not ascribe it to the power of
Satan or of magic, for they do not believe in either; but they follow as
nearly in the footsteps of their fathers as possible, when they tell us
that multitudes of men, in every age, and in every land, have been
turned from falsehood to truth by the belief of a lie, and from vice to
virtue by the example of an impostor!

6. But the strongest proof of the truth of the facts of the gospel is
the existence, the labors and sufferings of the apostles themselves.
Nobody denies that such men lived, and preached, and were persecuted on
account of their preaching that Jesus died and rose again. Now, if this
was a falsehood, what motive had they to tell it? It was very
displeasing to their rulers who had crucified him, and who had every
inclination to give them the same treatment. To preach another king, one
Jesus, to the Romans, was to bring down the power of the empire upon
them. Nothing could be more absurd in the eyes of the Grecian
philosophers than to speak of the resurrection of the bod