nature of the Deity and the moral
and intellectual nature of man" (as quoted by Lake). And "this
uniformity of conception and coincidence of language indicates," also,
that Christianity has only received and repeated the religious ideas
which existed in earlier times. How can that be a revelation from God
which was well known in the world long before God revealed it? The
acknowledgment of the priority of Pagan thought is the destruction of
the supernatural claims of Christianity based on the same thought; that
cannot be supernatural after Christ which was natural before him, nor
that sent down from heaven which was already on earth as the product of
human reason. The Rev. Mr. Lake fairly says: "We have evidence--clear,
conclusive, irrefutable evidence--as to what this doctrine really is. We
can trace its birth-place in the philosophic speculations of the ancient
world, we can note its gradual development and growth, we can see it in
its early youth passing (through Philo and others) from Grecian
philosophy into the current of Jewish thought; then, after resting
awhile in the Judaism of the period of the Christian era, we see it
slightly changing its character, as it passes through Gamaliel,
Paul--the writers of the Fourth Gospel and of the Epistle to the
Hebrews--through Justin Martyr and Tertullian, into the stream of early
Christian thought, and now from a sublime philosophical speculation it
becomes dwarfed and corrupted into a church dogma, and finally gets
hardened as a frozen mass of absurdity, stupidity, and blasphemy, in the
Nicene and Athanasian creeds" ("Philo, Plato, and Paul," pp. 71, 72).

The idea of IMMORTALITY was by no means "brought to light" by Christ, as
is pretended. The early Jews had clearly no idea of life after death;
"for in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall
give thee thanks?" (Ps. vi. 5). "Like the slain that lie in the grave,
whom thou rememberest no more.... Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead?
Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy lovingkindness be
declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy
wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of
forgetfulness?" (Ps. lxxxviii. 5, 10-12). "The dead praise not the Lord"
(Ps. cxv. 17). "I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons
of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they
themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of me