plying a similar process to the Gospels, he
states the difficulties which attend the literary question of their
origin(934) and fidelity of the narrative;(935) trying to show that the
apostles differed from each other, and held views differing from those
taught by the Saviour, as recorded in the first three Gospels.(936)
Approaching the subject of the use of miracles as an evidence, he contends
that they cannot prove a doctrine, and that their existence cannot be
proved by documents.(937) In the examination of Christianity he holds only
the humanity of Christ,(938) and regards Christianity not to be
superhuman, but an eclecticism from the Jewish religion; a conception, not
a revelation.(939) Successively attacking(940) the most sacred doctrines
of our faith,--prayer, pardon, sin,--he is at last landed in the doubt of a
future life, save so far as the intuitions seem to suggest it;(941) and in
conclusion he contents himself with the religion which consists in
obedience to the physical, moral, intellectual, and social laws;
confessing however that the heart dictates to prayer and religion, but
maintaining that the idea of general laws forbids the possibility of their
reality.(942)

The next writer whom we must name,(943) has not rested content with a
literary examination of existing religious forms, but has shown the
consummation to which the modern criticism of religion leads. The work,
"Thoughts in aid of Faith," that is, hints to advise those who have given
up all other faith, is too characteristic of a certain type of thought to
be omitted. It is an instance where the final result, to which
philosophical investigation has conducted, bears a resemblance to that
reached by Feuerbach in Germany.(944) In the treatment of the subject, the
tenderness of human character has not disappeared; and belief in the
teaching of religion is surrendered with painful sadness. Starting at
first from the unitarian point of view, this writer has gradually
advanced, by the aid of the modern philosophy, to the very pantheism at
which philosophy stood in the early ages of oriental speculation. In a
review of the historical and psychical(945) origin of religion and
Christianity, the idea of a divine Being is regarded as merely the giving
existence to an abstraction, the objectifying of the subjective; and
Christianity, as the form in which the notion of a personal God
necessarily clothes itself: so that the idea of God becomes a fiction
creat