ministers idol priests, who ever preach and commemorate this man, pray to him, sing praises to him, and consecrate generation after generation to his service; our people commit their souls and bodies to the keeping of this man for time and eternity, and all their hopes are inseparably connected with him as their Lord;—­while amidst this universal defection of the human race, this wide-spread idolatry which has taken possession of the most cultivated and intellectual nations, and threatens to overrun the world and absorb all other idolatries into itself, there appears but a trifling number who maintain the pure light of theism, and preserve the truth of God unsullied for the coming, and it is to be hoped, therefore, for better, ages of the world.  And who are these?  Jews, Deists, and Unitarians.  On these depend the world’s hopes of its ever becoming regenerated by a theology of truth regarding God.  Now, does it seem probable, we ask, under the government of God, that these have discovered the truth on such a fundamental fact in religion, while universal Christendom for eighteen centuries has believed a lie?—­and such a lie!  As a question of probability, what weight can we attach to this testimony, balanced not against numbers merely, but numbers along with the intellect, culture, and character of those who have believed in, derived their soul’s good from, and perilled their soul’s existence upon, Christ’s divinity?[A]

[Footnote A:  Mr Greg in his Essays, which at first appeared in the Edinburgh Review, admits this alternative.  His language is, “To a philosophic inquirer there will appeal little doubt that Trinitarianism and idolatry—­the worship of Christ as God, the worship of saints, the worship of the golden calf, have one common origin, the weakness of human imagination and the unspirituality of human intellect.”—­Vol. i., p. 61.  Mr Greg also says, in a note to the above—­“To accept the orthodox view of the Christian Revelation,” (i.e., Christ’s divinity,) “is to our apprehension to deny the divine origin of the Jewish religion.”  But was not “the view” of Jesus himself and His apostles the “orthodox” one?  And did they deny the divine origin of the Jewish religion?  Who is right—­Mr Greg or——?]

Consider also, as I have suggested, the effect produced by such a faith when real upon the religious ideas regarding God of all who really hold it.  On the supposition, for example, that the Christian’s faith in Jesus is vain—­that he is worshipping, loving, serving a creature, or a mere creation of his own mind, instead of the only living and true God,—­how can we account for the actual results of a faith so false and blasphemous upon his ideas regarding God?