It is to be expected that evangelical Christianity should often be under attack. At first one would think that a religion which exalts and seeks to follow the only perfect and righteous man who has ever lived on this earth, who never harmed anyone, whose words delivered from superstition and fear, whose works redeemed from pain, and demons, and death, and hunger, whose life was a great shaft of light shot into the murky darkness of the Roman world, in that sensual and skeptic century, who died because He loved us, and who always sought to bring men into communion with God, to bestow upon them eternal life and a home in heaven, one would have thought that such a character, and the religion which His life and work on earth established, would have been welcomed with open arms the first moment it was announced, and would, by its very message, the good works which flowed from it, and the hope which it established, never known opposition, or attack, or denunciation, except from the demons of hell, and Satan, who is a liar and murderer from th beginning. But such has not been its history. In fact, the New Testament, itself, from the records of the birth of our Lord down to the end of St. John's vision of the era of anarchy and persecution to come, testifies in the most startling way to the fact that Christ Himself was most viciously and constantly attacked, that His apostles suffered the same opposition, and that it was predicted by these very apostles that Christianity would continue so to suffer, down to the end of this age. — When Mary took her blessed Babe to the temple in Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, taking the Child into his arms, predicted, "Behold, this Child is set for the falling and rising of many in Israel; and for a sign which is spoken against" (Luke 2:34-35). — As Professor Alfred Plummer has well said, "It was the Divine purpose that the manifestation of the Messiah should cause the crisis just described; men must decide either to join or to oppose Him. The an indicates that in every case the appearance of the Christ produces this result: thoughts hitherto secret become known through acceptance or rejection of the Christ."