consistent not merely with itself, but with all that we can learn respecting the history and circumstances of the times to which it refers. If their narratives had not been true, they must have presented a very different aspect from what they now bear. They would have been full of incongruities, inconsistencies in the representation of character, and latent and obvious contradictions both of known facts and of statements contained in the narratives themselves.

According to the supposition which we are considering, Jesus Christ was not the Jewish Messiah, nor did he claim to be; he was not a messenger from God, in any proper sense of those words, nor did he assume that character; he had not the power of performing miracles, nor did he pretend to this power. Yet we have a consistent story, corresponding to a directly opposite conception of his character. This story, then, must be a work of invention, a product of human art and genius. But there could not well have been a more difficult subject for invention. Allowing it, however, to be one capable of execution, it is clear that neither of the four Evangelists possessed the intellectual powers and habits necessary for this extraordinary task. A groundwork of real facts,

instead of assisting them in their fiction, would only have embarrassed the subject, and rendered it more difficult and unmanageable. These facts would have been continually forcing themselves into notice, and obstructing the free exercise of invention. There would have been evident at first sight a strange mixture of heterogeneous materials in their narrative. We may say, therefore, that, supposing the Evangelists to have set out with the original conception of a divine messenger endued with miraculous powers, and placed in such circumstances as those in which Christ is represented to have been, it must have been a work of most extraordinary genius to imagine a thoroughly consistent and probable account of his ministry; and the necessity of conforming this account to a series of real facts, and of distorting natural events with their consequences into supernatural events with their appropriate consequences, would only have aggravated the difficulty. But such a consistent and probable story we do possess in each of the Gospels; and the only alternative seems to be, that it is either true, or that it is, what no one will believe, a most uncommon production of skill and genius on the part of the respective authors of these works. To suppose such a consistent

narrative to be formed by collecting traditions, fables, and exaggerated stories, invented and propagated by many individuals deceiving and deceived, is like imagining a fine historical picture to be composed by putting together figures and designs, the work of different unskilful artists, each following his own fancy.

CHAPTER III.

THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST AS IT APPEARS IN THE
GOSPELS.

SECTION I.

His Teaching.

THE perfect exhibition of moral excellence in the teaching and actions of Christ has been often urged as an intrinsic proof of the divinity of his mission. I am about to apply this consideration in a somewhat different manner, and to use it as a proof of the genuineness of the writings in which his character appears, and which profess to afford a record of what he taught.

The argument is this. The Gospels contain an exhibition of character, real or imaginary, incomparably more wonderful than is to be found in any other writings. It is the character of a messenger from God, assuming in his name the highest authority, constantly exercising supernatural powers, and appearing among men for the purpose of

making them acquainted with God, with their own immortal nature, with their duty, and with those ennobling and awful sanctions by which it is enforced. He is represented as discovering to men a perfect system of religion. He always appears, whether teaching, or acting, or suffering, as displaying the highest excellence. His character is everywhere consistent with itself and with the supernatural dignity of his office, though he is represented as passing through scenes the most trying and humiliating. We have, then, in these writings, a just conception of a perfect system of religion, as taught by a divine teacher, assuming the highest authority and exercising the most extraordinary powers, and displaying throughout a character in which we discover nothing but what is excellent and sublime.

But the writers of the Gospels derived those conceptions which we find in their works, either from reality, or from their own imaginations. If we allow the former part of this alternative, the fact that the writings are genuine may, as we shall see hereafter, be rendered in the highest degree probable, though, at the same time, the question of their genuineness becomes comparatively unimportant. But if it be contended that these writers