3. And there are matters in connection with Christianity to try the
faith of men. Like its great Author, when it first made its appearance,
it had "neither form nor comeliness" in the eyes of many. It neither met
the expectations of the selfish, proud, ambitious Jew, nor of the
disputatious, philosophic Greek. To the one "it was a stumbling-block,"
and to the other "foolishness." And there have been men in every age,
who have been unable to find in Christianity all that their preconceived
notions had led them to expect in a religion from Heaven. There are men
still, even among the sincerest and devoutest friends of Christianity,
who are puzzled and staggered at times by the mysterious aspects of some
of its doctrines, or by some of the facts connected with its history.
They cannot understand, for instance, how it is that it has not spread
more rapidly, and become, before this, the religion of the whole world.
You tell them the fault is in its disciples and ministers, and not in
Christianity itself. But they cannot understand why God should allow the
success of a system so important to depend on faithless or fallible men.
Nor can they understand how it is that in the nations in which the
Gospel has been received, it has not worked a greater transformation of
character, and produced a happier change in their condition. How is it,
they ask, that it has not extinguished the spirit of war, destroyed the
sordid lust for gain, developed more fully the spirit of
self-sacrificing generosity, and converted society into one great
brotherhood of love? How is it that the Church is not more holy, more
united, and more prosperous,--that professors and teachers of
Christianity do not exhibit more of the Christian character, and follow
more closely the example of the meek and lowly, the loving and
laborious, the condescending and self-sacrificing Saviour whose name
they bear? They are amazed that so little is done by professing
Christians to save the perishing classes; that so many of the churches,
instead of grappling with the vice and wretchedness of our large towns,