Indeed, no infidel
hypothesis can afford to do without the virtues of the early Christians
in accounting for the success of the falsehoods of Christianity. Hard
alternatives of a wayward hypothesis!
____
On the second of the above-mentioned hypothesis, that these miracles
were either a congeries of deeply contrived fictions, or accidental
myths, subsequently invented, the infidel must believe, on the former
supposition, that, though even transient success in literary forgery,
when there are any prejudices to resist, is among the rarest of
occurrences; yet that these forgeries--the hazardous work of many minds,
making the most outrageous pretensions, and necessarily challenging the
opposition of Jew and Gentile were successful beyond all imagination,
over the hearts of mankind; and have continued to impose, by an
exquisite appearance of artless truth, and a most elaborate mosaic of
feigned events artfully cemented into the ground of true history, on
the acutest minds of different races and different ages; while, on the
second supposition, he must believe that accident and chance have given
to these legends their exquisite appearance of historic plausibility;
and on either supposition, he must believe (what is still more
wonderful) that the world, while the fictions were being published, and
in the known absence of the facts they asserted to be true, suffered
itself to be befooled into the belief of their truth, and out of its
belief of all the systems it did previously believe to be true; and
that it acted thus notwithstanding persecution from without, as well
as prejudice front within; that strange to say the strictest historic
investigation bring this compilation of fictions or myths-even by the
admission of Strauss himself--within thirty or forty years of the very
time in which all the alleged wonders they relate are said to have
occurred; wonders which the perverse world knew it had not seen, but
which it was determined to believe in spite of evidence, prejudice, and
persecution! In addition to all this, the infidel must believe that the
men who were engaged in the compilation of these monstrous fictions,
chose them as the vehicle of the purest morality; and, though the most
pernicious deceivers of mankind were yet the most scrupulous preachers
of veracity and benevolence! Surely of him, who can receive all these
paradoxes--and they form but a small part of what might be mentioned--we
may say, 'O infidel, great is thy Faith!'
On the supposition that neither of these theories, whether of fraud
or fiction, will account, if taken by itself, for the whole of the
supernatural phenomena, which strew the pages of the New Testament, then
the objector, who relies on both, must believe, in turn, both sets of
the above paradoxes; and then, with still more reason than before, may
we exclaim, 'O infidel, great is thy Faith!'
Again; he must believe that till those apparent coincidences, which
seem to connect Prophecy with the facts of the origin and history
of Christianity,--some, embracing events too vast for hazardous
speculations and others, incidents too minute for it,--are purely
fortuitous; that all the cases in which the event seems to tally with
the prediction, are mere chance coincidences: and he must believe
this, amongst other events, of two of the most unlikely to which human
sagacity was likely to pledge itself, and yet which have as undeniably
occurred, (and after the predictions) as they were a priori improbable
and anomalous in the world's history; the one is that the Jews should
exist as a distinct nation in the very bosom of all other nations,
without extinction, and without amalgamation,--other nations and even
races having so readily melted away under less than half the
influence which have been at work upon them*; the other, and opposite
paradox,--that a religion, propagated by ignorant, obscure, and
penniless vagabonds, should diffuse itself amongst the most diverse
nations in spite of all opposition,--it being the rarest of phenomena to
find any religion which is capable of transcending the limits of race,
clime, and the scene of its historic origin; a religion which, if
transplanted, will not die, a religion which is more than a local or
national growth of superstition! That such a religion as Christianity
should so easily break these barriers, and though supposed to be cradled
in ignorance, fanaticism, and fraud, should, without force of arms,
and in the face of persecution, 'ride forth conquering and to conquer,'
through a long career of victories, defying the power of kings and
emptying the temples of deities,--who, but an infidel, has faith enough
to believe?+
____
* The case of the Gipsies, often alleged as a parallel, is a ludicrous
evasion of the argument.
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