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REV. CHANCELLOR LIAS^ M.A., ON 



demonstrably great difficulty of grafting a new religion on an 

 old one. 



The second and third cases involve a complete scientific 

 demonstration. The Mosaic Law, whether given to the world 

 five or fifteen hundred years before Christ, contained a system 

 of sacrifices every single idea in which is developed in the Christian 

 Scriptures, which, from the first century of the Christian era 

 to the twentieth, have been handed down in the whole Christian 

 congregation — to quote the words of one of the writers — as the 

 work of "eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.''* Such 

 testimony, in such a society, may be easily pooh-poohed, no doubt; 

 but with intelligent men it is not easily invalidated. In the second 

 case we have in the rites of a religion professedly preparatory 

 for another, the adumbration of a great and necessary Truth — 

 that of Propitiation ; as well as the acceptance of its principles 

 when the religion so clearly prophesied and foreshadowed actually 

 appeared. These characteristics of the Lord's Atonement 

 have remained a striking feature in the Christian system for 

 nearly two thousand years. In the third case, we have the most 

 prominent propagator of a new religion speaking with the 

 utmost confidence at a very early period of his ministry, yet in 

 language which — humanly speaking — it was quite impossible 

 to expect those to whom he had proclaimed the religion 

 of his Master either to understand or believe. Yet this con- 

 gregation has subsisted from the first century of Christianity 

 to the twentieth ; has passed through some most painful and 

 prolonged experiences and persecutions, and has, some three or 

 four years ago, become once more a part of a Christian nation. 

 Surely a reasonable man has a right to infer that a religion so 

 long hoped for and prepared for before it was revealed — so long 

 an embodiment of the truths proclaimed by its Master- — must 

 have come down, as it claims to have come down, from the Lord 

 in heaven. Nor must we forget that not merely these three 

 instances of an abiding fact, but one hundred times as many. 



* The fact that there were doubts in regard to one or two of them does 

 not materially affect this general statement. The Christian advocate 

 has been too sensitive about objections. In cases similar to this the 

 general consent of the whole community would be regarded as evidence 

 enough. Nor is the objection that the Apostolic age was an " uncritical" 

 age, a sound one. That age was one of high civilization, and no more 

 inclined to creduhty than the age of the German critic. 



