t example and
wakened out of their "delicious pastoral" by a heroic death, should
have been able to make an impression on Judaean faith, Greek intellect,
and Roman civilisation, and to give an impulse to mankind which has
lasted to this day, is surely one of the most incredible hypotheses
ever accepted, under the desperate necessity of avoiding an unwelcome
alternative.

M. Renan is willing to adopt everything in the Gospel history except
what is miraculous. If he is difficult to satisfy as to the physical
possibility or the proof of miracles, at least he is not hard to
satisfy on points of moral likelihood; and he draws on his ample power
of supposing the combination of moral opposites in order to get rid of
the obstinate and refractory supernatural miracle. To some extent,
indeed, he avails himself of that inexhaustible resource of unlimited
guessing, by means of which he reverses the whole history, and makes it
take a shape which it is hard to recognise in its original records. The
feeding of the five thousand, the miracle described by all the four
Evangelists, is thus curtly disposed of:--"Il se retira au desert.
Beaucoup de monde l'y suivit. _Grace a une extreme frugalite_ la troupe
sainte y vecut; _on crut naturellement_ voir en cela un miracle." This
is all he has to say. But miracles are too closely interwoven with the
whole texture of the Gospel history to be, as a whole, thus disposed
of. He has, of course, to admit that miracles are so mixed up with it
that mere exaggeration is not a sufficient account of them. But be bids
us remember that the time was one of great credulity, of slackness and
incapacity in dealing with matters of evidence, a time when it might be
said that there was an innocent disregard of exact and literal truth
where men's souls and affections were deeply interested. But, even
supposing that this accounted for a belief in certain miracles growing
up--which it does not, for the time was not one of mere childlike and
uninquiring belief, but was as perfectly familiar as we are with the
notion of false claims to miraculous power which could not stand
examination--still this does not meet the great difficulty of all, to
which he is at last brought. It is undeniable that our Lord professed
to work miracles. They were not merely attributed to Him by those who
came after Him. If we accept in any degree the Gospel account, He not
only wrought miracles, but claimed to do so; and M. Renan admits
it-