Before the appearance of Christ there existed nothing like the faith of Christ and Christianity upon the face of the earth. The Jews alone had a few of its types and shadows, but the great mystery of Christ had been kept hid since the world began. All the Gentile nations were wrapped up in the very worst idolatry, having little or no connection whatever with morality, except to corrupt it with the infamous examples of their gods. "They all worshiped a multitude of gods and demons, whose favor they sought by obscene and ridiculous ceremonies, and whose anger they tried to appease with the most abominable cruelties." With them, heaven was open only to legislators and conquerors, the civilizers and destroyers of mankind. This was the summit of their religion, and even this was limited to a few prodigies of genius and learning, which was but little regarded and understood by the great masses. One common cloud of ignorance and superstition involved them. At this time Christ came as a teacher; his appearance was like a rising sun, dispelling the darkness and blessing the earth with light and heat. If any man can believe that the son of a carpenter, together with twelve of the meanest and most illiterate mechanics, unassisted by any superhuman wisdom and power, should be able to invent and promulgate a system of theology and ethics the most sublime and perfect, which all such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had overlooked, and that they, by their own wisdom, repudiated every false virtue, though universally admired, and that they admitted every true virtue, though despised and ridiculed by all the rest of the world--if any man can believe that they were _impostors_ for no other purpose than the promulgation of truth, _villains_ for no purpose but to teach honesty, and _martyrs_ with no prospect of honor or advantage; or that they, as false witnesses, should have been able, in the course of a few years, to have spread this religion over the most of the known world, in opposition to the interests, ambition and prejudices of mankind; that they triumphed over the power of princes, the intrigues of states, the forces of custom, the blindness of zeal, the influence of priests, the arguments of orators, and the philosophy of the world, without any assistance from God, he must be in possession of more faith than is necessary to make him a Christian and continues an unbeliever from mere credulity. If the credulous infidel, whose convictions are without evidence and against evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable? Are the rich more insolent _when Christianized_? Are poor Christians most insolent and disorderly? Does Christianity make worse parents and worse children? Does it make husbands and wives, friends and neighbors