" (Vol. ii. p. 209.)
"All history," the author says; but why does he not give us a few
instances out of "all history," that we might compare them with this
Gospel account, and see if there was anything like it?
Such a story, if false, is not a myth. A myth is the slow growth of
falsehood through long ages, and this story of the Resurrection was
written circumstantially within twenty years of its promulgation, by one
who had been an unbeliever, and who had conferred with those who must
have been the original promoters of the falsehood, if it be one.
To call such a story a myth, is simply to shirk the odium of calling it
by its right name, or more probably to avoid having to meet the
astounding historical difficulty of supposing that men endured what the
Apostles endured for what they must have known to have been a falsehood,
and the still more astounding difficulty that One Whom the author of
"Supernatural Religion" allows to have been a Teacher Who "carried
morality to the sublimest point attained or even attainable by
humanity," and Whose "life, as far as we can estimate it, was uniformly
noble and consistent with his lofty principles," should have impressed a
character of such deep-rooted fraud and falsehood on His most intimate
friends.
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