Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/279

 forward Christianity was free to expand in obedience to the charge she had received at her origin and to apply herself to the task of supplanting every other belief.

The acceptance of all religions is pressed by an appeal to the supernatural sub-structure on which they profess to be based; and this claim is substantiated by the presentment of some miraculous circumstances from which they are asserted to have derived their birth. Evidential obscurity has always been the soul of such pretensions; and the truth of the most improbable occurrences has been resolutely maintained because assured witnesses could not be produced in order to prove a negative. But the time for historical discussion or sifting of evidence in relation to such matters has long gone by; and in the twentieth century the philosopher is enabled without examination to dismiss with a smile the mere suggestion that such events have occurred. That any narrative, which in its essential statements consists largely of the marvellous, should be rejected as false in its entirety has almost risen to the dignity of a canon of historical criticism. The principle, however, has often been unduly strained in its application; and no judicious investigator would refuse to allow that a slender thread of fact may sometimes be extricated from a mass of incredible legend. The awe-inspiring life of Jesus emanates from authors of unascertain-*