meanest, poorest, most wretched of mankind.

CHAP. V.

On the impossibility of Christ's being an Impostor, LET us for a while consider what impossibilities

attend the supposition that our blessed Saviour was an impostor.

He is represented in those Scriptures, whose truth we have been considering, to have passed his life on earth promulgating a religion which is entirely at war with the natural and most powerful propensities and tastes of men; or if the stickler for innate purity will have it so, with their darling habits, favourite vices, cherished indulgences. He lived in the strictest practice of this religion, renouncing all illicit gratifications of sense, and, that he might the better fulfil his mission, most even of the lawful pleasures of social life. He went about doing good, when the only returns he met with were abuse, contempt, and misrepresentation. In spite however of insult, violence, and temptation, he persisted in the same mortification of himself; the same active benevolence towards others. He forgave injuries, prayed for his persecutors, and finally sealed his testimony on the cross, when a previous confession that he was an impostor would probably, and flight would certainly have saved him, He died, and left behind him a code of religion and morality essentially different from any

that had before existed; confessedly more pure, perfect, and sublime than any preceding ones. He died and bequeathed it to the world, with the authority of one who had suffered death in its defence. He left to mankind a body of precepts originated by himself, a man whose continual association had been with the illiterate and low vulgar: a man untaught in the philosophy of the schools; from his youth upwards engaged in pursuits which left him little time for reading and study. What the most enlightened of the Heathen philosophers, after years of mental toil and severe application, could not discover, Christ declared at once. His doctrines never improved, never varied; they were perfect at first, when at twelve years old he taught the Doctors in the temple,* and always so. Thus then three things appear:

First-That what Christ said he believed;

Secondly-That he delivered to men a code of religion and morality infinitely purer than any which had before appeared;

Thirdly-That he framed this code without the help of men; without borrowing any thing from the wise men of this world; that he knew what he said by his own knowledge, by intuition, in his earliest years, at first as well as at last.†

*It is said that Christ merely tarried in the Temple for the sake of learning from the Doctors. I do not see how this can be reconciled with the question proposed by him to his mother" wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business ?" If Christ came to preach to mankind what the spirit of God dictated to him, what had he to learn of the Doctors, or learning from them, how could it be said that he was about his Father's business? And as to the improbability of the thing, there was nothing more wonderful in his possessing superhuman knowledge at twelve than at thirty years old.

If Christ had really devoted his youth and early manhood to intense study, and not to those avocations in which the Scriptures represent him to have been engaged, the Jews would not have failed to pub lish, what it would so much have served their ends to make known.

It shall be the object of a future chapter to shew that this same Jesus, so honest that he chose to die not only rather than assent to what he did not believe, but rather than not publish openly and on all occasions what he did believe; of such unconquerable integrity that he chose to be crucified not only rather than to tell a lie, but rather than not to reveal the truth; of such superhuman wisdom that he knew by intuition all that is pure and beautiful in morality, sublime and perfect in religion; it shall, I say, be the object of a future chapter to shew that this same Jesus does frequently in the New Testament declare himself to be of a divine nature. But as to prove him not an impostor is obviously the first point to be accomplished, let us prosecute the subject a little further.

If Christ were an impostor he was an ingenious one, and had the power of imposing upon multitudes, and that, not by deceiving their senses, but by making them be lieve contrary to the evidence of their senses. Five thousand men could not possibly have their senses so imposed on as to suppose that they were fed with five loaves and two small fishes, when they were actually not so fed. They could not be so imposed on as to think

*It has been said that enthusiasm might lead the Apostles to fancy that they saw something which did not actually take place. Now, not to dwell upon what I have before endeavoured to shew, viz. the ease with which such impɔsitions (if they were impositions) as the above, might have been exposed, let me observe that the enthusiasm which could lead men to fancy that they distributed only five loaves and two small fishes, when in fact they distributed as many as would have filled ten large waggons, must have been an enthusiasm of a most miraculous nature indeed. The enthusiasm which made the Disciples fancy that they saw him rise and walk, whom they had just before seen and smelled a putrid corpse, when in fact they neither saw nor smelled any such thing was, truly, an enthusiasm of a very odd sort. There are who profess them. selves doubtful as to the truth of this miracle, because one Evangelis alone records it; but if all the Evangelists wrote by the inspiration, and under the immediate direction of God, as I will hereafter endeavour to shew that they must have done, then the testimony of one is as good as the testimony of one hundred. God can no more lie through the mouth of one Evangelist, than through the mouths of four,

that a quantity of bread was compressed into a few baskets, which would have filled as many waggons. If our Saviour then were an impostor, he was a most successful one indeed, and did by tricks of which modern jugglershave no conception, impose upon the thousands that followed him. But he must have had some motive for so doing. He must have sought by his cunning either fame, or wealth, or power, or ease, or safety; either pleasure or profit of some sort. I defy the united world to produce an instance of an impostor who has not been actuated by some motive of this sort. But Jesus Christ despised them all. If he were an impostor then, he was an impostor without any aim; an impostor preaching the doctrine of self-denial, and practising all that he preached, and this to be buffeted, reviled, treated with scorn, despitefully used, spit upon.

And the same, so far as relates to the doctrine they preached, and in a considerable degree (a degree which exceeded all the righteousness of the unconverted amongst both Jews and Gentiles) to the holiness of their lives, may be said of the Evangelists and Apostles. They were indeed most marvellously skilful impostors, and apt scholars of their master, for though, for the most part, unlettered, and untaught in the wisdom of this world, they contrived to impose, not only on the ignorant like themselves, but on doctors of the law, on statesmen, philosophers, rulers, and schoolmen. They were too, marvellous enthusiasts in the system of cheat and imposture which they had engaged in, for they chose to die rather than to renounce it, though no earthly good could result either to themselves or their descendants from the sacrifice, and dying to exhort their fellows to perseverance in practising the same fatal tricks, and preaching Now that one or two men the same fatal doctrines. should have been mad in this particular way, that is, should have braved death in defence of a system of ingenious but unprofitable cheat, one might perhaps believe; but that thousands (for thousands of willing mar

with a strong hold upon those they rule; if it be merely a convenient instrument by which to act on the superstitious fear of the low vulgar, and keep the turbulent in awe; an useful state engine; it must be confessed that it is at least the most cunningly devised fable of the sort that ever was framed; that it was framed under the oddest circumstances; and that its framers were the maddest of all mortals, for they had no end in what they did. Mahomet was more rational; he got something by his tricks; he did not transport himself to the seven heavens, travel through them ere the bed which he left got cold, and see the white cock which supports them for nothing. Moreover he despised common miracles; miracles that men could witness, or which might do them good. But which of our Lord's miracles did not do good? The greatest of Christ's actions shrinks to nothing compared with this chef d'œuvre of a jour ney. Now why, if all one reads in the Scriptures be the fabrication of a set of rogues, should not Christ and his Apostles have done something as magnificent and absu d for themselves, as Mahomet and his followers? The Apostles of the former were at least as illiterate as the first converts of the latter; at least as likely to be caught with splendid stories. They were in all probability no less credulous, and most likely (for they were all Asiatics) of imaginations not less fertile.

Expecting a great temporal prince, the Jews might possibly have been imposed on, had our Lord addressed himself to their ambition, and flattered them with hopes of freedom, renovated power, and conquest. But acting as, he did, he had no chance of success in his plot, (if we suppose that plot to have been the acquisition of any of those things which other men account desirable) however well he