Take up your New Testament and read the contemporary history--Acts xxii.

to the end of the book--and the letters of Paul from Rome, to Philemon, Titus, the Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and the Second to Timothy, written when the aged prisoner was ready to be offered, and the time of his departure, amidst such scenes and sufferings, was at hand.

Then form your own opinion as to the origin and nature of that faith in Jesus which enabled him to say: "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto me, that I may finish my course with joy, and the testimony which I have received of the Lord Jesus." "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day." Whatever may be your opinion of the apostle's hope for the future, you must acknowledge that we have ascertained, beyond contradiction, these four facts of the past: 1.

That without the power of force, or the help of governments, and in spite of them, the apostles did convert vast multitudes of idolaters from a senseless worship of stocks and stones, to the worship of the one living and true God; a thing never done by the preachers of any other religion before or since.
2.

That without the help of power or civil law, and solely by moral and spiritual means, they did persuade multitudes of licentious heathens to give up their vices, and obey the pure precepts of the morality contained in their Epistles; a thing never done by the preachers of any other religion before or since.
3.