The Project Gutenberg EBook of Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June,
1864, by Various

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Title: Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864
Devoted to Literature and National Policy

Author: Various

Release Date: January 15, 2007 [EBook #20363]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.

VOL. V.--JUNE, 1864.--NO. VI.

ERNEST RENAN'S THEORY.

Christianity is a fact. We sometimes hear of men who are said to 'deny'
'Christianity.' The expression is nonsense. Men cannot deny the sun.
Christianity has been a visible thing, on this planet, for eighteen
hundred years. It has done a heavy amount of work, which is very visible
too. It is altogether too late in the day to '_deny_ Christianity.'

That is the first thing to be understood. There is no arguing against
the fact. You must take the fact and make the best of it. If your theory
requires the annihilation of the fact, it's a bad thing for your theory,
for the fact insists on staying. What an amount of fearfully laborious
stupidity we would have been saved, if only that plain principle had
been remembered!

Christianity has stood face to face with the world, for ages, a hard,
stern, uncompromising reality. With a pair of tremendous arms it has
worked, fought, endured, conquered, destroyed, builded, all over the
earth. It has burned its brand into time. It has stamped its footprints
in fire and brightness on earth and sea. It so stands, a great,
wonderful, triumphant, flaming fact, blazing through the ages, flaming
to the stars, melting, moulding, enlightening humanity.

The first thing to be remembered, then, by Christian and unbeliever
alike, when they come to speak of Christianity, is that these things are
not the matters in debate. They are the facts to be explained, to be
accounted for. In all