Yet this side of its adaptation is turned only towards men of highest culture.  The most remarkable thing about Christianity is its adaptation to all sorts and conditions of men.  Are you highly intellectual?  There is in its problems, historical and philosophical, such worlds of material as you may spend your life upon with the same interminable interest as is open to the students of natural science.  Or are you but a peasant in your parish church, with knowledge of little else than your Bible?  Still are you ...[64]

Regeneration.

How remarkable is the doctrine of Regeneration per se, as it is stated in the New Testament[65], and how completely it fits in with the non-demonstrative character of Revelation to reason alone, with the hypothesis of moral probation, &c.  Now this doctrine is one of the distinctive notes of Christianity.  That is, Christ foretold repeatedly and distinctly—­as did also His apostles after Him—­that while those who received the Holy Ghost, who came to the Father through faith in the Son, who were born again of the Spirit, (and many other synonymous phrases,) would be absolutely certain of Christian truth as it were by direct vision or intuition, the carnally minded on the other hand would not be affected by any amount of direct evidence, even though one rose from the dead—­as indeed Christ shortly afterwards did, with fulfilment of this prediction.  Thus scepticism may be taken by Christians as corroborating Christianity.

By all means let us retain our independence of judgement; but this is pre-eminently a matter in which pure agnostics must abstain from arrogance and consider the facts impartially as unquestionable phenomena of experience.

Shortly after the death of Christ, this phenomenon which had been foretold by Him occurred, and appears to have done so for the first time.  It has certainly continued to manifest itself ever since, and has been attributed by professed historians to that particular moment in time called Pentecost, producing much popular excitement and a large number of Christian believers.

But, whether or not we accept this account, it is unquestionable that the apostles were filled with faith in the person and office of their Master, which is enough to justify His doctrine of regeneration.

Conversions.

St. Augustine after thirty years of age, and other Fathers, bear testimony to a sudden, enduring and extraordinary change in themselves, called conversion[66].

Now this experience has been repeated and testified to by countless millions of civilized men and women in all nations and all degrees of culture.  It signifies not whether the conversion be sudden or gradual, though, as a psychological phenomenon, it is more remarkable when sudden and there is no symptom of mental aberration otherwise.  But even as a gradual growth in mature age, its evidential value is not less. (Cf.  Bunyan, &c.)