Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub

to a year, and even a day; but which cannot possibly be materially wrong.

2. Having settled this preliminary question, we come to another of more importance respecting the Author of this religion. Did such a person as Jesus exist, or no? Antichristian writers do not seem to have made up their mind upon this point. Some assert that he did exist, and some that he did not :1 and others, strange to say, suppose both. And the

2

reader, into whose hands this treatise may fall, must make up his mind one way or other. The religion may be an imposture, though Jesus did exist. But it must have been an imposture, if he did not: if his name were merely ascribed, like those of Hercules or Bacchus, to adventures which never took place; or, like that of Brahma, to doctrines which had no divine authority.

On the supposition, however, that no such person

i Volney, who accounts for the origin of Christianity in the following summary way: "The great Mediator and first Judge was expected, and his advent desired, that an end might be put to so many calamities. This was so much the subject of conversation, that some one was said to have seen him; and a rumour of this kind was all that was wanting to establish a general certainty. The popular report became a demonstrated fact. The imaginary being was realized; and all the circumstances of mythological tradition being in some manner connected with this phantom, the result was a regular and authentic history, which from henceforth it was blasphemous to doubt." Such is infidelity!

2 Paine, in different parts of his "Age of Reason." I should not notice such writers as these, if anything more rational had been advanced by others.

ever really existed, but was merely an allegorical or imaginary personage, or the hero of a romantic tale, we must believe what follows; we must believe, that a company of persons undertook to persuade their countrymen that a man had grown up and lived among themselves, and had rendered himself conspicuous by his works and doctrines, and had at last been put to death at the most solemn and frequented festival of their own nation;—when no such person had ever been executed, or even seen, or heard of. And more, that they did persuade their countrymen to believe all this. For the first Christians were converts from the city in which the principal scene was laid, and became so at the very time when these transactions were said to have happened.

It is disagreeable to speak of the Gospel as an imposture. I am sure that many, who do not in any real sense believe it, would start at the idea of using so harsh a term. But we must not deceive ourselves.. If Jesus did not exist, nay, further, if he were not, indeed, the Son of God, it is an imposture. Those, therefore, who framed it, must have considered how they could in the surest and easiest manner deceive the world. And certainly they would not begin by asserting such a fact as the birth, public ministry, and execution of a man who had never been born, or known to teach, or put to death at all. Still less could a religion, founded on such false assertions, be received and prevail, in the very place and from the very

time when these things were said to have occurred.

The ground, then, which a sceptic must take, who means his statements or opinions to be examined, is, that Jesus did exist, and that the main circumstances of his history are true; but that with respect to his divinity, or his divine mission, he probably deceived himself; but certainly he deceived others, when he persuaded them to worship him, and to teach a religion under his authority and name.

I will consider the question on this ground. I will take the life, ministry, and public execution of Jesus as an historical fact. It may be denied; as men may deny anything which they do not actually see, or hear, or feel. But it has this advantage over every other historical fact; that it has been regularly attested by persons believing it, and staking all that was most valuable to them upon its truth, from the date assigned for its occurrence to the present hour. It is not extravagant to say, that no memorial which was ever preserved of any past event has a thousandth part of the same title to be trusted, as the memorial of the life and death of Jesus, which is the Christian religion. The only account, therefore, which can be reasonably given of the origin of Christianity, considered as an imposture, is to suppose that Jesus, having attracted some attention and raised a party in Judea, during his life, with hopes which were cut short by his execution;-his followers, from some

unknown motive, conspired to introduce a new religion, of which Jesus was made the author and head; and attributed to him such adventures, endowments, and doctrines, as might best suit their object.

It were too much to say, that this was impossible; and the phenomenon before us, the existing religion, if its origin were not indeed divine, is to be accounted for on this supposition, and on no other.

CHAPTER II.

OPPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY TO THE OPINIONS
PREVAILING AMONGST THE JEWS.

WHAT objection is there to the supposition stated at the conclusion of the preceding chapter, viz., that a party of Jews fabricated the religion, which they set out to teach in the name and under the authority of Jesus?

Before this question can be answered, we must consider the nature of the religion, and of the people among whom it originated, and to whom it was proposed. Truth is lost in generalities. Anything may appear possible, or even probable, on cursory reflection, concerning a distant country, and when eighteen centuries have intervened. But whoever is in earnest, and afraid to be mistaken or deceived in so serious a question, must not lose himself in an imaginary period of confusion or anarchy, but carry himself back to the time and place where the religion originated which it is supposed so easy to fabricate.

The scene of what is related in the Gospel is laid in Jerusalem. And there seems no room to deny that the disciples of Jesus were there first formed into

« ForrigeFortsæt »