CHAPTER II.

REMARKS ON OTHER THEORIES.

Ir the Gospels be genuine, if the essential facts which I have stated in "The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels" be not erroneously stated, which no one, I believe, will pretend, and if the reasoning upon them be not fallacious, of which every one may judge for himself, the theory of Strauss is wholly excluded; there is no ground on which it can stand. It becomes evident that it is only one of those many theories which hang in the cloudy region of German speculation, οὔτε γῆς οὔτε οὐρανοῦ ἁπτόμενα, — unconnected with anything on earth or in heaven. If the Gospels were written by Apostles and by those who received their accounts immediately from Apostles, the mythical theory of their having proceeded from men who innocently and unconsciously originated and propagated marvellous stories respecting our Lord must vanish at once into air. Nothing remains for the disbeliever in the historical

facts concerning the origin of our religion, but to fall back on the forlorn hypothesis, that the history of Jesus is throughout fictitious, and that, of all intentional falsifiers, the Apostles were the most shameless and the most successful, - shameless and successful in so marvellous a manner, that no account whatever can be given of it.

If, then, the views which have been taken of the theory of Strauss be correct, nothing can be added, which will exhibit more clearly its incoherent and dreamlike character, or its utter insufficiency to explain either the origin of Christianity, or any one essential fact connected with the origin of Christianity. I pass over, therefore, many other considerations respecting it, which to my own mind seem equally decisive as to its character, and will only make a few remarks on this in common with other theories to account for the establishment of Christianity which have been advanced by such as refuse to admit its miraculous origin. Those theories are very few. To object, not to explain, has been the common work of unbelievers.

PREVIOUSLY to the theory of Strauss, that which was prevalent in Germany supposed, that the facts

recorded in the Gospels, with the exception of those of a miraculous character, were in the main historically true, and that, in regard to the accounts of miracles which they contain, those likewise were founded on certain facts which actually took place, but facts in the common course of nature, to which a miraculous character was given only through the misapprehension of those by whom they were witnessed. But it did not attempt to explain how Christianity was established in the world through this misapprehension of some ignorant Jews, whose folly was regarded with contempt and indignation by a very great majority of their countrymen. This theory has passed, or is rapidly passing, into a matter of history, and there it will stand, as a melancholy proof of the intellectual and religious state of men in a large portion of civilized Europe during the latter part of the last and the beginning of the present century.

In regard to these two theories, and the speculations, generally, of infidel writers respecting the origin of Christianity, there are some preliminary considerations which are essential to forming a correct judgment on the subject, but which have been greatly neglected or kept out of view.

Let him who is reasoning against the divine origin of our religion fix any period he may choose for the commencement of its authentic history, still at this period phenomena present themselves of a character altogether wonderful and unparalleled.

We may take, for example, the last quarter of the second century, and regard as fabulous all the previous history of Christianity. What, then, is to be found at this period?

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We find the miraculous history of Jesus, history of a Jew who was represented to have been commissioned by the God of the Jews to instruct and command all men in his name, find this history, as it is recorded in the four Gospels, received with an immovable conviction of its truth, by a great number of heathen converts. They were steady in affirming that this history, and the books in which it is contained, had been received by them from those who had made known to them the new religion, from Apostles of Christ and their associates. From whom, indeed, could they have received the history of Christ's ministry, the truth of which they believed so firmly, except from those by whom Christ had been made known to them, and on whose teaching their faith in him rested? Of the strength of their belief

they gave sure proof by the marvellous change which it wrought in their hearts and lives, by the wide separation which it produced between them and the heathen world, by their readiness to submit to all the deprivations and evils which it brought upon them; and even when they shrunk from torture and death, it was not that their belief was shaken, but that their courage failed. Here is one group of remarkable phenomena to be accounted for. Let us look at another.

In an age which has afforded pictures of the darkest and most revolting depravity prevailing throughout the heathen world, in the midst of such men as had furnished materials for the histories of Tacitus and Suetonius, histories from which so much more may be inferred by a Christian reader than is told by the heathen writers, at a period when pagan ignorance and superstition had become inflamed into persecuting bigotry, we find Christianity in existence and extending its power, in opposition to the strong antipathy and resistance of the evil by which it was surrounded. To use the words of a Christian then living, Tertullian, it was "converting men to the worship of the true God, causing them to reject error, and