patriotism, it was
_immanent_; not transitively associated by any links whatever, but
immanently intertwisted, indwelling in the idea. Therefore it happened
that a man, however heartsick of this tumid, bladdery delusion, although
to him it was a balloon, by science punctured, lacerated, collapsing,
trailed through ditch and mud under the rough handling and the fearful
realities of life, yet he durst not avow his private feelings. That
would have been even worse than with us: it would have been to proclaim
virtue and vice mere bubbles and chimeras. He who really thinks so even
we reasonably suspect of _practical_ indifference unless when we believe
him to speak as a misanthrope.

The question suppose to commence as to the divine mission of Christ. And
the feeble understanding is sure to think this will be proved best by
proving the subject of this doubt to have been a miracle-working power.
And of all miracles, to have mastered (not merely escaped or evaded)
death will be in his opinion the greatest. So that if Christ could be
proved to have absolutely conquered death, _i.e._, to have submitted to
death, but only to recoil from his power and overthrow it, to have died
and subsequently to have risen again, will, _a fortiori_, prove Him to
have been sent of God.

Not so. All and every basis of credibility must be laid in the _moral_
nature, where the thing to be believed is important, _i.e._, moral. And
I therefore open with this remark absolutely _zermalmende_ to the common
intellect: That from a holy faith you may infer a power of resurrection,
but not from a power of resurrection fifty times repeated can we infer a
holy faith. What in the last result is the thing to be proved? Why, a
holy revelation, not of knowledge, but of things practical; of agenda,
not scienda. It is essential that this holy should also be _new_,
_original_, _revelatum_. Because, else, the divinest things which are
_connata_ and have been common to all men, point to no certain author.
They belong to the dark foundations of our being, and cannot challenge a
trust, faith, or expectation as suspended upon any particular individual
man whatever.

Here, then, arises the [Greek: protontokinon]. Thick darkness sits on
every man's mind as to Christ's revelation. He fancies that it amounts
to this: 'Do what is good. Do your duty. Be good.' And with this vague
notion of the doctrine, natural is it that he should think it as old as
the hills. The first ste