divinity, Mithra, under whom were two others of inferior order, Oromasdes and Ariman, the former the author of light, intelligence and all good; and the latter of darkness, and of whatever is gross, or the cause of evil.

The Hindoos from very remote antiquity embraced the system of religion called Brahminism, involving the worship of their three principal gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. It was in form and in essence an enormous polytheism, if, indeed, it was not rather true Pantheism; for it taught that at the end of every Calpa (formation) all things are absorbed in the Deity, and that at a stated time the creative power would again be called into action.

The Chinese, and other nations of eastern Asia, followed Buddhism, their principal god being Buddha; it was in effect little else than sheer Atheism. Its highest reward of piety, and its object of most earnest desire and pursuit, was extinction of being, or annihilation.

Such, in brief, were the prevailing religions of the most enlightened nations of the world at the time of our Saviour's advent. And these were the views and creeds, not of the unreflecting and ignorant only, but also of the most intellectual and enlightened-of poets, philosophers and legislators of those who were the pride of their time, and the boast of their species. Socrates, while he uttered many sublime sentiments of a moral and religious nature, yet believed in a plurality of objects of worship, and expressed it as his conviction, that a wise and good man ought to worship the gods recognized by the country to which he belonged. His disciple and intimate friend

Xenophon declares of him, that he never undertook any work without first taking counsel of the gods. And his last request was that an offering he had vowed to Esculapius might be paid for him by his friends. The illustrious names of Zeno, Cleanthes, Epictetus, and Marcus Antoninus, stand connected with a religious system, Stoicism, which, while it recognized in some sense a Supreme Being, drew no intelligible distinction between God and matter; which made Fate a prime article of faith, and affirmed that "when death is we are not." The religious sentiments of Seneca were of no higher type: "whatever that be," he said, "which has determined our lives and our deaths, it binds the gods also by the same necessity; human and divine things alike are carried along in an irrevocable course." Epicurus, though a man of most vigorous intellect, and the author of many wise, excellent and exalted sentiments, maintained that the universe accidentally arose from a cloud of dust, that the gods were indifferent as to human affairs, or rather, entirely unacquainted with them. And Aris totle taught that "the chief deity resides in the celestial sphere, and observes nothing, and cares for nothing be yond himself." *

From all this we plainly see that even those individuals, who were endowed with a superior degree of intellectual power, and who occasionally obtained a glimpse of the truth, and of the right path, were unable to proceed in it, but ever and anon lost themselves in the mazes of doubts

*See Brucker's Historia Philosophia Critica.

and errors, and disfigured what little they had acquired of sound wisdom, by an admixture of the most extravagant and absurd opinions. Left to its unaided struggle, helpless and forlorn, indeed, was the condition of our race.

II.

FROM this dark and desolate aspect of mankind, which presents itself to us alike in the valley of the Nile and on the plains of India, amid the temples of Greece and the palaces of Rome, let us now turn to another fielda field to which the great Names, whose sentiments we have now reviewed, would have scorned to look for light, or wisdom, or anything else great or good. It is the small and impoverished province of Judea, occupied by a subjugated and despised people. Here we behold a man, plain and lowly, reared amid the toil and poverty of an obscure village, going forth and discoursing to delighted multitudes on the profound subjects, which all the wisdom of sages had failed to illumine or relieve. This is Jesus of Nazareth. Let us listen to a few of his sublime enunciations. Without wealth, power, or prestige to support him, we hear him proclaim to the world with the calmness of assured knowledge and of conscious authority, in opposition to the philosophies and religions of all nations, that—

There is none good but One, that is God.

All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.

He upholdeth all things by the word of his power, and by Him all things consist.

He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

He feedeth the fowls of the air; He arrays the lilies of the field as was not Solomon in all his glory.

A sparrow shall not fall on the ground without your Father; the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

He is the God and Father of all; in Him all live, and move, and have their being.

He is the King eternal, immortal, invisible; the only wise God, whom no man hath seen, nor can see:

Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen.

Thus, in all places, throughout his ministry, and by all his apostles, Jesus Christ proclaimed in the face of the world, and in the midst of the hoary idolatries of the earth, that there is but one God, true and living and wise and powerful; that none shared with Him at the first in the creation of the universe, that none now share with Him in its government; that He hath made all things, and that for his pleasure they are and were created. This was a doctrine that was new and surprising to the nations of the earth-a doctrine such as was never broached in the Academies of Greece, never heard in the Forum of Rome, never whispered by the oracles of Arcadia, Delphos or Dodona-a doctrine, indeed, far in advance, and far above all the wisdom of the world. In this, Jesus of Nazareth stood alone in his teaching. No other instructor had ever put forth, or ever conceived