mbracing events too vast for hazardous
speculations and others, incidents too minute for it,--are purely
fortuitous; that all the cases in which the event seems to tally with
the prediction, are mere chance coincidences: and he must believe
this, amongst other events, of two of the most unlikely to which human
sagacity was likely to pledge itself, and yet which have as undeniably
occurred, (and after the predictions) as they were a priori improbable
and anomalous in the world's history; the one is that the Jews should
exist as a distinct nation in the very bosom of all other nations,
without extinction, and without amalgamation,--other nations and even
races having so readily melted away under less than half the
influence which have been at work upon them*; the other, and opposite
paradox,--that a religion, propagated by ignorant, obscure, and
penniless vagabonds, should diffuse itself amongst the most diverse
nations in spite of all opposition,--it being the rarest of phenomena to
find any religion which is capable of transcending the limits of race,
clime, and the scene of its historic origin; a religion which, if
transplanted, will not die, a religion which is more than a local or
national growth of superstition! That such a religion as Christianity
should so easily break these barriers, and though supposed to be cradled
in ignorance, fanaticism, and fraud, should, without force of arms,
and in the face of persecution, 'ride forth conquering and to conquer,'
through a long career of victories, defying the power of kings and
emptying the temples of deities,--who, but an infidel, has faith enough
to believe?+

____

* The case of the Gipsies, often alleged as a parallel, is a ludicrous
evasion of the argument. These few and scattered vagabonds, whose very
safety has been obscurity and contempt, have never attracted towards
them a thousandth part of the attention, or the hundred thousandth part
of the cruelties, which have been directed against the Jews. Had it been
otherwise, they would long since have melted away from every country in
Europe. We repeat that the existence of a nation for 1800 years in the
bosom of all nations, conquered and persecuted, yet never extinguished,
and the propagation of a religion amongst different races without force,
and even against it,--are both, so far as known, paradoxes in history.
+ 'They may say,' says Butler, 'that the conformity between the
prophecies and the event is by accide