' Both, therefore, are, alas! now for ever lost.
That great problem--to account for the origin and establishment Of
Christianity in the world, with a denial at the same time of its
miraculous pretensions--a problem, the fair solution of which is
obviously incumbent on infidelity--has necessitated the most gratuitous
and even contradictory hypotheses, and may safely be said still to
present as hard a knot as ever. The favourite hypothesis, recently, has
been that of Strauss--frequently re-modified and re-adjusted indeed by
himself--that Christianity is a myth, or collection of myths--that is,
a conglomerate (as geologists would say) of a very slender portion
of facts and truth, with an enormous accretion of undesigned fiction,
fable, and superstitions; gradually framed and insensibly received, like
the mythologies of Greece and Rome, or the ancient systems of Hindoo
theology. It is true, indeed, that the particular critical arguments,
the alleged historic discrepancies and so forth, on which this author
founds his conclusion--are for the most part, not original; most of
them having been insisted on before, both in Germany, and especially
in our own country during the Deistical controversies of the preceding
century.
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