sake of argument, that, so far as we had the means of judging, there
has occasionally appeared, without faith in Christ, a certain product
of character, apparently as pure, lofty, self-denying, loving, and
devoted to God as any which ever professed to owe its origin to Jesus
Christ; yet, where has there been on earth such a _body_ of living
persons as those Christians who, within the bosom of the universal
Church, during eighteen centuries, have manifested that kind of
character which all men profess to admire and reverence? In vain one
tries to conceive the flowers of moral beauty and glory that have
sprung up within the garden of Christendom! Being rooted in the earth,
they may have been soiled, indeed, by its dust, but they yet expanded
in loveliness to the sky, and sent forth a fragrance to the air,
peculiar to the plants raised by the Great Husbandman. Number, if you
can, the saints of the Christian Church; the young and old, the poor
and rich, who in every age and clime have been truthful, simple,
sincere, patient, forgiving, and compassionate; who have enjoyed an
inward life of peace with God, maintained an outward conduct, and
possessed a reality of abiding love to their Father in heaven and to
their brethren on earth peculiar to themselves. Their lives have been
a blessing to the world, and a happiness to their own hearts;
their deathbed has been freed from the fears of a dark future, and
brightened by the pure prospect of continued life and joy. The
Christian Church, and the Christian Church _alone_, contains such
characters; and these are the lights of our homes, the salt of the
earth, and the only security of the world's progress.

Now, to what is this great result owing? How is this product of
character, which is affecting the world's history, and gradually
leavening the whole lump of humanity, to be accounted for? What power
has originated it, or by what has it been sustained? Who are more