Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/249

Rh XXI

You are startled, and well you may be, "at the notion that the resurrection of Christ has been the mere offspring of the imagination." I am quoting your words, but you have not quoted mine. I never said, nor should I dream of saying, that the resurrection of Christ was "the offspring of the imagination," any more than I should say that the law of gravitation is "the offspring of the imagination," or that light is "the offspring of the eye." But this is just an ordinary specimen of the way in which people whose minds are blocked and choked with prejudice, misunderstand what is contrary to their preconceptions. You have made up your mind that the Imagination is a kind of excrescence on humanity, a faculty independent of the Creator, and incapable of being made by Him the medium of revelation; and so you pervert my words to suit your fancies. But what I said was that Imagination is the basis of all that is worth calling knowledge, and that, as God reveals the laws of astronomy through imaginative Reason, so He has revealed the Resurrection of Christ through imaginative Faith.

Before speaking of the special bearing of the Imagination upon the manifestation of Christ's Resurrection, let me say a word or two on the manner in which our human environment appears to have been adapted to foster the growth of this faculty. You will be better prepared to