Page:Note of an English republican on the Muscovite crusade (IA noteofenglishrep00swiniala).pdf/9

 a Latter-day Pamphlet on the Crucifixion, what an Occasional Discourse on the Nazarene Question, might we not now possess, whereby to lighten the darkness of history and adjust the balance of judgment! To the regretful disciple of Mr. Carlyle, considering duly of this matter, it must seem wellnigh as though nature were sparing of her greatest men at the right time, and again were lavish at the wrong. Happily, however, it can be no hard task, for any disciple that way given, to reconstruct in fancy from the many models before him the perfect scheme and argument of such possible pamphlet or discourse. For if ever a life was lived on earth, if ever a word was preached, if ever a death was died, most utterly in all points deserving of abhorrence from all who abhor the thought of freedom, of contempt from all who contemn the notion of equality, of hatred from all who hate the name of brotherhood, that life was assuredly the life, that word was the Gospel, that death was the death of Jesus. It cannot he therefore in his most undeserving name that we hear this protest on behalf of suffering Christians put forth by the worshipper of every gallows on earth but one—and that one the cross of Christ.

We may then presumably be permitted to dismiss without further discussion any possible theory of Christian sympathy with Christians on the part of a preacher to Whom the spirit of every saying yet fathered on the Founder of Christianity should seem incomparably more hateful and contemptible than ever did the letter of any to Diderot or Voltaire. And with