Lectures on the Reasonableness of Christianity and the Shallowness of Unbelief

On the 9th of March, 1879, his Grace, the Most Rev. Archbishop Vaughan, began a course of Lenten lectures in his pro-Cathedral in Sydney, Australia. The congregations which assembled to hear him on that and the four Succeeding Sundays were immense, and were composed of Protestants and infidels, as well as Catholics. On the conclusion of the series, the Archbishop was urgently requested to publish his discourses, and, after considerable importuning, he consensed. They are no, v reprinteu for the benefit of American readers, and are herewith offered as most opportune and powerful to the attention of Christians of all denominations, and to all other men of good will, who lost in the slough of doubt, yet long for the solid ground of certainty and truth. It is my purpose during the four next Sunday evenings to develop four arguments touching the reasonableness of Christianity and the shallowness of Unbelief. I purpose to show that the Religion of Denial is not only a shallow one, but also that it cannot be made to work; and that, on the other hand, the religion of Affirmation, or, in other words, Christianity, is adapted in a marvellous manner to the wants of humanity, and is supported by such an array of arguments, by so weighty a cumulus of probabilities, is so consonant to reason, that to reject it would be to act not only against the enlightened dictates of conscience, but also in opposition to those universally accepted maxims of prudence which are the guide of all reasonable men in every important secular affair of life. I hope to bring out clearly before you, from the intellectual and moral constitution of man, evidences of his having been made for something beyond merely living as an animal upon the earth; I hope to show, from what we know of the Deity, from the arguments and evidences which we possess, and which lie spread before the intellectual eye of every thinking rational creature regarding His providence and governance of human things, that His existence is as undeniable a fact as the existence of man himself, and that before the creature can deny the existence of his Maker, he must first of all deny the truthfulness of those intellectual and moral faculties which, for the very initial steps of reasoning, he cannot choose but trust. I hope to show you that, when the arguments and evidences which prove that man was made for a better and a higher life than this are brought into comparison with the proofs we possess of an overruling Providence of God, the result is so harmonious as to furnish an additional reason for our belief in the high destiny of man, and in the loving mercy of a Personal God