light of the sun by a
veil, then, and not till then, can they arrest the progress of truth
or invalidate the verities of the Bible. Unwise and unhappy men! they
are but plowing the air--striking with a straw--writing on the surface
of the water--and seeking figs where only brambles grow.

And compare not the propagation of Mohammedanism with the propagation
of Christianity; for it is useless, if not absurd. Suffice it to say
that the former was propagated by fanaticism, falsehood, pandering to
the passions, promising a voluptuous paradise, and the frequent use of
the sword; but the latter by sanity, truth, restraining the passions,
promising a pure and holy heaven, and the use of no other sword but
the sword of the Spirit, that is, the word of God. Christianity
came--saw--and conquered. And all her victories have been
bloodless--of untold advantage to the vanquished themselves. They have
desolated no country--produced no tears but to wipe them away--and
broken no hearts but to heal them. Now to what is all this to be
attributed? Can we reasonably ascribe the general reception of the
Bible and the consequent spread of Christianity to anything short of
divine power? Is it not unprecedented? "Could any books," says an able
writer, "have undergone so fearful and prolonged an ordeal and
achieved so spotless and perfect a triumph, unless they had been given
and watched over by the Deity?"

_From its innumerable martyrs._ "If a person," says Dr. Jortin, "lays
down his life for the name of Christ, or for what he takes to be the
religion of Christ, when he might prolong his days by renouncing his
faith, he must stand for a martyr in every reasonable man's calendar,
though he may have been much mistaken in some of his opinions." It has
been calculated that since Christianity arose, not less than fifty
millions of martyrs have laid down their lives for its sake. Some were
venerable for years; others were in the bloom of life; and not a few
were of the weaker sex. They were, for the most part, well-instructed
persons. Many were learned and respectable men; neither factious in
their principles nor violent in their passions. They were neither wild
in their notions, nor foolishly prodigal of their lives. This may
safely be affirmed of such men as Polycarp and Ignatius, Jerome and
Huss, Latimer and Cranmer, Ridley and Hooper, Philpot and Bradford,
Lambert and Saunders, and many others. Yet these so valued the Bible,
that, rather tha