Proclaiming the miracles of
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.
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