They read them in their temples. They teach them in their
schools. They publish them in every language; they send them round the
globe. In England and America, the first of the nations, you see them
everywhere. You meet with them in hotels, in boarding-houses, at railway
stations, and on steam packets; in asylums and infirmaries; in barracks
and in prisons; in poor-houses and in palaces; in the drawing-rooms of
the wealthy, and in the hovels of the poor. The greatest scholars and
rarest geniuses devote their lives to the diffusion of their doctrines;
and there is no probability of a change. If Christianity be false, the
world is mad: if it be true, the case of the infidel is deplorable in
the extreme.
And that many portions of the Christian system _are_ true, is past
doubt. They carry the evidence of their truth on their very face. And
other portions admit of easy proof. The truth of many Christian
doctrines can be proved by experience. And the rest are probable enough.
There is nothing absurd, nothing irrational in Christianity. The
teachings of Christ are the perfection of goodness. They are the
perfection of wisdom and beauty. Even Goethe could say, "The human
race can never attain to anything higher than Christianity, as presented
in the life and teachings of its Founder.
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