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?+