"Permit me to say, that the arguments you adduce to disprove, if possible, the truth of the Christian faith, and its practical utility, are precisely those I would employ in proof of its Divine origin and beneficial tendency. Going back to an early period of time, let us consider some of the indisputable facts of history. The tribes of Israel, we know, had been held for centuries as slaves in the land of Egypt; and after their emancipation they went to reside in Palestine. In most of those qualities which command the respect and admiration of mankind, the Jewish nation was remarkably deficient. With the exception of their sacred writings, their literature appears to have been meagre in the extreme; no eminent philosophers, historians, or orators adorn their annals, and the fine arts seem scarcely to have had any existence among them. Compared with the Greeks and Romans, and other nations of antiquity, they were barbarians; and were spoken of in the language of scorn and contempt by their more accomplished and renowned contemporaries. In ONE department of knowledge, however, the despised Jewish people far surpassed the haughty statesmen and polished sages of Greece and Rome. They knew the only true God, and spoke of him in a style corresponding with his greatness, his condescension, and his paternal love. While the inhabitants of all other countries were abandoned to the grossest and most abject superstition and idolatry, the Hebrews alone adored one God, and alone appear to have possessed any suitable ideas of the dignity and holiness of the Supreme Being; and while the worship of the pagan divinities was licentious and cruel, that of the God of the Jews was distinguished by its mildness and purity. Here is a contrast which must be traced to some adequate cause." "The Jews most certainly, in this department of knowledge, claim a just superiority over other ancient nations; but this may have been owing to their isolation and their training." "That I grant; but their isolation was a Divine arrangement, and their training a Divine dispensation. They were separated from all other people by the express command of the Lord their God; and their teachers who trained them in this department of knowledge--the knowledge of the only true God, and of the way of salvation, proclaimed that God had made himself known to them by special revelation." "Yes, they said so, and I will admit that they believed it was so; but as they were not infallible, they may have been mistaken."