For the purpose of measuring the progress of religion, attempts have sometimes been made to effect a sort of Christian statistics, or calculation of the actual number of true believers throughout the world. But the propriety of such an application of arithmetic is far from being conspicuous; and seeing that the subject of computation lies confessedly beneath the reach of the human eye, its accuracy may be absolutely denied. Endeavors, again, have been made to judge of the advance or decline of religion by comparing the state of devotional feeling and of morals in the present and in other times. But all such comparisons must be deemed, at the best, extremely vague, and open to immense errors, arising either from the prepossessions of the individual who makes the comparison, or from the want of data sufficiently ample and exact; and probably from both.
No attempts of this delusive kind will here be offered to the reader; but instead of them, certain unquestionable and obvious facts will be assumed as affording reasonable ground of very exhilarating hopes.
If any one were required, without premeditation, to give a reply to the question—What is the most prominent circumstance in the present state of the Christian Church? he would, if sufficiently informed on the subject, almost certainly answer—The honor done to the Scriptures. Such an answer may be supposed as suggested by the conspicuousness of the fact. Now in order to gather our inference safely from this fact, it is necessary to look back for a moment to past times.
In the first and best age of the church, the deference paid to the inspired writings, whether of prophets or apostles, was as great as can be imagined to exist: and whatever of beneficial influence belongs to the Sacred Volume, was then actually in operation; or it was so with a single drawback, namely—that arising from the scarcity of the book, and its non-existence in the hands of the Christian commonalty. To estimate duly the greatness of this disadvantage, let it be imagined what would be the effect, among ourselves, of a sudden withdrawment of almost all but the church copies of the Scriptures. This supposition need not be enlarged upon, for every devotional Christian, and every master of a family feels that, in whatever way the loss might be attempted to be supplied, it would still be afflicting and injurious in the extremest degree.