sped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder
and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils,
passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a
sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god--
and always like a god. Christ had even a literary style of his own,
not to be found, I think, elsewhere; it consists of an almost furious
use of the A FORTIORI. His "how much more" is piled one upon
another like castle upon castle in the clouds. The diction used
ABOUT Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive.
But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque;
it is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled
into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself
a sword of slaughter, and told men to buy swords if they sold their
coats for them. That he used other even wilder words on the side
of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery; but it also,
if anything, rather increases the violence. We cannot even explain
it by calling such a being insane; for insanity is usually along one
consistent channel. The maniac is generally a monomaniac. Here we
must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given;
Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions
may blaze beside each other. The one explanation of the Gospel
language that does explain it, is that it is the survey of one
who from some supernatural height beholds some more startling synthesis.

I take in order the next instance offered: the idea that
Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself
with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history.
And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the
Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark.
It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations.
If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery
the answer is simple: it didn't. It arose in the Mediterranean
civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world
was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun,
when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast. It is perfectly true
that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that
the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross
still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: