Page:From Rome to Rationalism (1896).djvu/22

22 for trust in the Gospel story if we had reliable assurance from known writers that it existed, as we now have it, immediately after the time of Christ, and that it had emanated from Jewish eye-witnesses of the events; but nothing could be farther from the actual case. It is not until the middle of the second century that we have any testimony in favour of the authenticity of the Gospels worth considering. To quote Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp as witnesses to the authenticity of the Gospels is absurd; at the most their words only show that certain documents existed which subsequently appear in the text of the Gospel. Justin is the earliest writer from whom we can gather anything about the Gospels of a really useful character. He lived more than a century after the death of Christ.

This, therefore, is the true position of the question. Towards the middle of the second century. certain documents appeared professing to describe the life of a religious teacher who had lived in a remote part of the empire more than 100 years before. These documents, or gospels, are many in number, and all of unknown authorship; they are in the possession of an obscure and fanatical sect, and many of them contain obvious absurdities. Gradually the more absurd are denounced as apocryphal, and four are retained, which, together with some letters of one of the early Christians, form the “New Testament” of future ages. Could anything be more credulous than to put faith in such a biography, especially when we see how every great religious teacher has been credited with supernatural powers by his followers in the course of a century or two after his death? The utmost we are justified in thinking of Christ is that he was a man of noble and generous life, with a singular influence over his fellow-men, which was counteracted by the intrigues of the priestcraft he so frequently denounced, and which ultimately brought about his death. In this character he will remain one of the heroes of humanity until the end of time; but more than this it is unreasonable, amid the silence of contemporary writers, to demand for him. The crucifix will ever be a symbol for the veneration of humanity; not that it will cast its dark shadow over the world to chill and mortify the lives of men, but it will be a type, like Socrates’ poison-cup, of moral heroism, of unyielding fidelity to truth, of victorious opposition to hypocrisy and tyranny.

It seems idle to discuss the question of the Papacy after arriving at negative conclusions on the three preceding points; yet the title would hardly be exhausted without some reference to my change of views on that institution. The removal of disabilities and the Oxford Movement have brought the Church of Rome into prominence in this country once more; in fact, it was only the insular prejudices of Englishmen