ral has been humanized, and the divinity that
hedged the records has rapidly abandoned them. And now looked at in the
common daylight their whole aspect changes for us; and stories that we
once accepted with a solemn reverence seem childish, ridiculous,
grotesque, and not unfrequently barbarous. Or if we are hardly prepared
to admit so much as this, this much at least has been established
firmly--that the Bible, if it does not give the lie itself to the
astonishing claims that have been made for it, contains nothing in
itself, at any rate, that can of itself be sufficient to support them.
This applies to the New Testament just as much as to the Old; and the
consequences here are even more momentous. Weighed as mere human
testimony, the value of the Gospels becomes doubtful or insignificant.
For the miracles of Christ, and for his superhuman nature, they contain
little evidence, that even tends to be satisfactory; and even his daily
words and actions it seems probable may have been inaccurately reported,
in some cases perhaps invented, and in others supplied by a deceiving
memory. When we pass from the Gospels to the Epistles, a kindred sight
presents itself. We discern in them the writings of men not inspired
from above; but, with many disagreements amongst themselves, struggling
upwards from below, influenced by a variety of existing views, and
doubtful which of them to assimilate. We discern in them, as we do in
other writers, the products of their age and of their circumstances. The
materials out of which they formed their doctrines we can find in the
lay world around them. And as we follow the Church's history farther,
and examine the appearance and the growth of her great subsequent
dogmas, we can trace all of them to a natural and a non-Christian
origin. We can see, for instance, how in part, at least, men conceived
the idea of the Trinity from the teachings of Greek Mysticism; and how
the theory of the Atonement was shaped by the ideas of Roman
Jurisprudence. Everywhere, in fact, in the holy building supposed to
have come down from God, we detect fragments of older structures,
confessedly of earthly workmanship.

But the matter does not end here. Historical science not only shows us
Christianity, with its sacred history, in this new light; but it sets
other religions by the side of it, and shows us that their course
through the world has been strangely similar. They too have had their
sacred books, and their inca