estowed upon them by
Paley. A little later, when they emerge into historical light, their own
writers give us sufficient evidence whereby we may judge them; and we
find them superstitious, grossly ignorant, quarrelsome, cruel, divided
into ascetics and profligates, between whom it is hard to award the palm
for degradation and indecency.

Having "proved"--in the above fashion--that a number of people in the
first century advanced "an extraordinary story," underwent persecution,
and altered their manner of life, because of it, Paley thinks it "in the
highest degree probable, that the story for which these persons
voluntarily exposed themselves to the fatigues and hardships which they
endured, was a _miraculous_ story; I mean, that they pretended to
miraculous evidence of some kind or other" ("Evidences," p. 64). That
the Christians believed in a miraculous story may freely be
acknowledged, but it is evidence of the truth of the story that we want,
not evidence of their belief in it. Many ignorant people believe in
witchcraft and in fortune-telling now-a-days, but their belief only
proves their own ignorance, and not the truth of either superstition.
The next step in the argument is that "the story which Christians have
_now_" is "the story which Christians had _then_" and it is urged that
there is in existence no trace of any story of Jesus Christ
"substantially different from ours" ("Evidences," p. 69). It is hard to
judge how much difference is covered by the word "substantially." All
the apocryphal gospels differ very much from the canonical, insert
sayings and doings of Christ not to be found in the received histories,
and make his character the reverse of good or lovable to a far greater
extent than "the four." That Christ was miraculously born, worked
miracles, was crucified, buried, rose again, ascended, may be accepted
as "substantial" parts of the story. Yet Mark and John knew nothing of
the birth, while, if the Acts and the Epistles are to be trusted, the
apostles were equally ignorant; thus the great doctrine of the
Incarnation of God without natural generation, is thoroughly ignored by
all save Matthew and Luke, and even these destroy their own story by
giving genealogies of Jesus through Joseph, which are useless unless
Joseph was his real father. The birth from a virgin, then has no claim
to be part of Paley's miraculous story in the earliest times. The
evidence of miracle-working by Christ to be found in th