age of the world's past history has it been so strongly rooted in the
convictions and affections of so many men, nor has it ever been given
such promise of filling the whole earth.

Let us suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that by some
process hitherto undiscovered, Christianity, as the religion of
supreme love to this living Person, Jesus Christ, is at last proved to
be a fiction; that the millennium of infidelity has arrived; that the
religion taught by Christ and His apostles has become as dead to the
world as that of Buddh or Confucius is now to the mind of Europe; that
our Christian churches, like the heathen temples of Greece or Rome,
remain but as monuments of a superstition long ago exploded by the
light of science and philosophy; that all those supernatural Christian
facts and truths, which like a mighty firmament of stars, now cluster
around the name of Jesus, have departed as lights from the visible
universe; that Christian truth is as silent before the world as Christ
himself was when He stood before Herod, and answered him nothing;
until even the wailing cry has ceased of the last desponding and
disconsolate believer on earth, "They have taken away my Lord, and
I know not where to find him!" Well, then, the work is done! The
energetic teachers of the propaganda of unbelief have accomplished
their long-cherished purpose, and the professors of an earnest and
devoted faith in Christ have perished, leaving no memorial behind them
except their "curious books," or their hoary tombstones, which record
their old faith in Him as the resurrection and the life.

When such a crisis as this has at last arrived, the world will surely
pause, and count the fruits of victory. Wise men will then doubtless
consider with an earnest spirit what has been gained to humanity by
this tremendous revolution in all those opinions and ideas cherished