s it, is the modern
parallel to Julian.

Accordingly the conduct of the early church during this struggle has a
living lesson of instruction for the church in Christian lands, as well as
in its missionary operations to the heathen. The victory of the early
church was not due wholly to intellectual remedies, such as the answers of
apologists, but mainly to moral; to the inward perception generated of the
adaptation of Christianity to supply the spiritual wants of human
nature.(249) As the heathen realized the sense of sin, they felt
intuitively the suitability of salvation through Christ; as they witnessed
the transforming power of belief in Him, they felt the inward testimony to
the truth of Christianity. The external evidence of religion had its
office in the early church, though the belief(250) in magic and in oracles
probably prevented the full perception of the demonstrative force due to
the two forms of external evidence, miracles and prophecy. But the
internal evidences,--Christ, Christianity, Christendom, were the most
potent proofs offered,--the doctrine of an atoning Messiah filling the
heart's deepest longings, and the lives of Christians embodying heavenly
virtues.

The modern church may therefore take comfort, and may hope for victory.
The weak things of the world confounded the strong, not only because the
Holy Spirit granted the dew of his blessing, but because the scheme and
message of reconciliation which the church was commissioned to announce,
were of divine construction. Each Christian who tries, however humbly, to
spread the knowledge of Christ by word or by example is helping forward
the Redeemer's kingdom. Let each one in Christ's strength do his duty, and
he will leave the world better than he found it; and in the present age,
as in the times of old, Gnosticism and heathenism will retire before
Christianity; the false will be dissipated, the good be absorbed, by the
beams of the Sun of righteousness.

LECTURE III. FREE THOUGHT DURING THE MIDDLE AGES, AND AT THE RENAISSANCE;
TOGETHER WITH ITS RISE IN MODERN TIMES.

LUKE xxi. 33.

_Heaven and earth shall pass away; but my words shall not pass
away._

We have studied the history of unbelief down to the fall of heathenism. A
period of more than seven hundred years elapses before a second crisis of
doubt occurs in church history. The interval was a time of social
dissolution and reconstruction; and when the traces of the