CHAPTER XVII

AND now the time is come for us to consider the works of our Saviour in our own age, and to contemplate the living operations of the living God. For how shall we describe these mighty works save as living proofs of the power of a living agent, who truly enjoys the life of God? If any one inquire the nature of these works, let him now attend. But recently a class of persons, impelled by furious zeal, and backed by equal power and military force, evinced their enmity against God, by destroying His churches, and overthrowing from their foundations the buildings dedicated to His worship. In short, in every way they directed their attacks against the unseen God, and assailed Him with a thousand shafts of impious words. But He who is invisible avenged Himself with an invisible hand. By the single fiat of His will His enemies were utterly destroyed. But a little while, and they were flourishing in great prosperity, exalted by their fellow men as worthy of divine honour, and blessed with a continued period of power and glory, so long as they had maintained peace and amity with Him whom they afterwards opposed. As soon, however, as they dared openly to resist His will, and to set their gods in array against Him whom we adore; immediately, according to the will and power of that God against whom their arms were raised, they all received the judgment due to their audacious deeds. Constrained to yield and flee before His power, together they acknowledged His Divine nature, and hastened to reverse the measures which they had before essayed. Our Saviour, therefore, without delay erected trophies of this victory, and once more adorned the world with holy temples and consecrated houses of prayer; in every city and village, nay, throughout all countries, and even in barbaric wilds, ordaining the erection of churches and sacred buildings to the honour of the Supreme God and Lord of all. Hence it is that these hallowed edifices are deemed worthy to bear His name, and receive not their appellation from men, but from the Lord Himself, from which circumstance they are called churches, or houses of the Lord. And now let him who will stand forth and tell us who, after so complete a desolation, has re-erected and restored these sacred buildings? Who, when all hope appeared extinct, has caused them to rise on a nobler scale than heretofore? And well may it claim our wonder, that this renovation was not subsequent to the death of those adversaries of God, but whilst the destroyers of these edifices were still alive; so that the recantation of their evil deeds came in their own words and edicts. And this they did, not in the sunshine of prosperity and ease (for then we might suppose that benevolence or clemency might be the cause), but at the very time that they were suffering under the stroke of Divine vengeance. Who, again, has been able to retain in obedience to His heavenly precepts, after so many successive storms of persecution, nay, in the very crisis of danger, so many persons throughout the world devoted to the pursuit of sacred philosophy, and those holy quires of virgins who had dedicated themselves to a life of perpetual chastity and purity? Who taught them cheerfully to persevere in the exercise of protracted fasting, and to embrace a life of severe and consistent self-denial? Who has persuaded multitudes of either sex to devote themselves to the study of sacred things, and prefer to bodily nutriment that intellectual food which is suited to the wants of a rational soul? Who has instructed barbarians and peasants, yea, feeble women, slaves, and children, in short, unnumbered multitudes of all nations, to live in the contempt of death; persuaded of the immortality of their souls, conscious that human actions are observed by the unerring eye of justice, expecting God’s award to the righteous and the wicked, and therefore true to the practice of a just and virtuous life? For they needed to be actuated by these motives, in order to patient perseverance in the course of godliness. Surely these are the acts which our Saviour, and He alone, even now performs. And now let us pass from these topics, and endeavour by inquiries such as these that follow to convince the objector’s obdurate understanding. Come forward, then, whoever thou art, and speak the words of reason: utter, not the thoughts of a senseless heart, but those of an intelligent and enlightened mind: speak, I say, after deep and solemn converse with thyself. Who of the sages whose names have yet been known to fame, has ever been foreknown and proclaimed from the remotest ages, as our Saviour was by the prophetic oracles to the once divinely-favoured Hebrew nation? But His very birth-place, the period of His advent, the manner of His life, His miracles, and words, and mighty acts, were anticipated and recorded in the sacred volumes of these prophets. Again, who so present an avenger of crimes against Himself; so that, as the immediate consequence of their impiety, the entire Jewish people were scattered by an unseen power, their royal seat utterly removed, and their very temple with its holy things levelled with the ground? Who, like our Saviour, has uttered predictions at once concerning that impious nation and the establishment of His Church throughout the world, and has equally verified both by the event? Respecting the temple of these wicked men, He said: “Your house is left unto you desolate:” and, “There shall not be left one stone upon another in this place, that shall not be thrown down.” And again, of His Church He says; “I will build my church upon a rock, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” How wondrous, too, must that power be deemed which summoned obscure and unlettered men from their fisher’s trade, and made them the legislators and instructors of the human race! And how clear a demonstration of His Deity do we find in the promise so well performed, that He would make them fishers of men: in the power and energy which He bestowed, so that they composed and published writings of such authority that they were translated into every civilized and barbarous language, were read and pondered by all nations, and the doctrines contained in them accredited as the oracles of God! How marvellous His predictions of the future, and the testimony whereby His disciples were forewarned that they should be brought before kings and rulers, and should endure the severest punishments, not indeed as criminals, but simply for their confession of His name! Or who shall adequately describe the power with which He prepared them thus to suffer with a willing mind, and enabled them, strong in the armour of godliness, to maintain a constancy of spirit indomitable in the midst of conflict? Or how shall we enough admire that steadfast firmness of soul which strengthened, not merely His immediate followers, but their successors also, even to our present age, in the joyful endurance of every infliction, and every form of torture, in proof of their devotion to the Supreme God? Again, what monarch has prolonged his government through so vast a series of ages? Who else has power to make war after death, to triumph over every enemy, to subjugate each barbarous and civilized nation and city, and to subdue his adversaries with an invisible and secret hand? Lastly, and chief of all, what slanderous lip shall dare to question that universal peace (to which we have already referred), established by His power throughout the world? For thus the mutual concord and harmony of all nations coincided in point of time with the extension of our Saviour’s doctrine and preaching in all the world: a concurrence of events predicted in long ages past by the prophets of God. The day itself would fail me, gracious emperor, should I attempt to exhibit in a single view those cogent proofs of our Saviour’s Divine power which even now are visible in their effects; a power which no human being, in civilized or barbarous nations, has ever yet attained. But why do I speak of men, since of the beings whom all nations have deemed divine, none has appeared on earth with power like to His? If it be so, let the fact now be proved. Come forward, ye philosophers, and tell us what god or hero has yet been known to fame, who has delivered the doctrines of eternal life and a heavenly kingdom as He has done who is our Saviour? Who, like Him, has persuaded multitudes throughout the world to pursue the principles of Divine wisdom, to fix their hope on heaven itself, and look forward to the mansions there reserved for them that love God? What god or hero in human form has ever held his course from East to West, a course co-extensive as it were with the solar light, and irradiated mankind with the bright and glorious beams of his doctrine, causing each nation of the earth to render united worship to the One true God? What god or hero yet, as He has done, has set aside each object of false worship among barbarous and polished nations; has ordained that divine honours should be withheld from all, and claimed obedience to that command: and then, though singly conflicting with the power of all, has utterly destroyed the opposing hosts; victorious over the gods and heroes of every age, and causing Himself alone, in every region of the habitable world, to be acknowledged by all people as the Son of God? Who else has commanded the nations inhabiting the continents and islands of this mighty globe to assemble weekly on the Lord’s day, and to observe it as a festival, not indeed for the pampering of the body, but for the comfort and invigoration of the soul by instruction in Divine truth? What god or hero, exposed, as our Saviour was, to so sore a conflict, has raised the trophy of victory over every foe? For they indeed, from first to last, unceasingly assailed His doctrine and His people: but He who is invisible, by the exercise of a secret power, has raised His servants and the sacred houses of their worship to the height of glory.

But why should we still vainly aim at detailing those Divine proofs of our Saviour’s power which no language can worthily express; which need indeed no words of ours, but themselves appeal in loudest tones to those whose mental ears are open to the truth? Surely it is a strange, a wondrous fact, unparalleled in the annals of human life; that the blessings we have described should be accorded to our mortal race, and that He who is in truth the only, the eternal Son of God, should thus be visible on earth.