Sec. 5.  Comparative Theology will furnish a new Class of Evidences in Support of Christianity.

Such an examination, doing full justice to all other religions, acknowledging their partial truth and use, will not depreciate, but exalt the value of Christianity.  It will furnish a new kind of evidence in its favor.  But the usual form of argument may perhaps be changed.

Is Christianity a supernatural or a natural religion?  Is it a religion attested to be from God by miracles?  This has been the great question in evidences for the last century.  The truth and divine origin of Christianity have been made to depend on its supernatural character, and to stand or fall with a certain view of miracles.  And then, in order to maintain the reality of miracles, it became necessary to prove the infallibility of the record; and so we were taught that, to believe in Jesus Christ, we must first believe in the genuineness and authenticity of the whole New Testament.  “All the theology of England,” says Mr. Pattison,[7] “was devoted to proving the Christian religion credible, in this manner.”  “The apostles,” said Dr. Johnson, “were being tried one a week for the capital crime of forgery.”  This was the work of the school of Lardner, Paley, and Whately.

But the real question between Christians and unbelievers in Christianity is, not whether our religion is or is not supernatural; not whether Christ’s miracles were or not violations of law; nor whether the New Testament, as it stands, is the work of inspired men.  The main question, back of all these, is different, and not dependent on the views we may happen to take of the universality of law.  It is this:  Is Christianity, as taught by Jesus, intended by God to be the religion of the human race?  Is it only one among natural religions? is it to be superseded in its turn by others, or is it the one religion which is to unite all mankind?  “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?” This is the question which we ask of Jesus of Nazareth, and the answer to which makes the real problem of apologetic theology.

Now the defenders of Christianity have been so occupied with their special disputes about miracles, about naturalism and supernaturalism, and about the inspiration and infallibility of the apostles, that they have left uncultivated the wide field of inquiry belonging to Comparative Theology.  But it belongs to this science to establish the truth of Christianity by showing that it possesses all the aptitudes which fit it to be the religion of the human race.