Christianity to be illusions of imagination or mythical legends,--the
inspiration of its records no other or greater than that of Homer's
'Iliad,' or even 'Aesop's Fables;'--rejecting the whole of that
supernatural clement with which the only records which can tell us
any thing about the matter are full; declaring its whole history
so uncertain that the ratio of truth to error must be a vanishing
fraction;--the advocates of these systems yet proceed to rant and
rave--they are really the only words we know which can express our
sense of their absurdity--in a most edifying vein about the divinity
of Christianity, and to reveal to us its true glories. 'Christ,' says
Strauss, 'is not an individual, but an idea; that is to say, humanity.
In the human race behold the God-made-man! behold the child of the
visible virgin and the invisible Father!--that is, of matter and of
mind; behold the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Sinless One; behold him who
dies, who is raised again, who mounts into the heavens I Believe in this
Christ! In his death, his resurrection, man is justified before God!'+

____

* The main objection, both with the old and the new forms of infidelity,
is, that against the miracles; the main argument with both, those which
attempt to show their antecedent impossibility; and criticism directed
against the credulity of the records which contain them. The principal
difference is, that modern infidelity shrinks from the coarse imputation
of fraud and imposture on the founders of Christianity; and prefers the
theory of illusion or myth to that of deliberate fraud. But with this
exception, which touches only the personal character of the founders
of Christianity, the case remains the same. The same postulates and the
same arguments are made to yield substantially the same conclusion.
For, all that is supernatural in Christianity and all credibility in