ose of other faiths, as its uncompromising pretension to be a final or
absolute religion. If Christ be only the eminently good and wise and
philanthropic man the author describes him to be, deliberating,
legislating, for the improvement of man's morals, he may be very
admirable, but nothing can be inferred from that circumstance to the
deeper inquiry. If he claim no essentially different significance to our
regard, on God's part, than that claimed by Zoroaster, Confucius,
Mahomet, Hildebrand, Luther, Wesley, he is to be sure still entitled to
all the respect inherent in such an office; but then there is no _a
priori_ reason why his teaching and influence should not be superseded
in process of time by that of any at present unmentionable Anne Lee,
Joanna Southcote, or Joe Smith. And what the human mind craves, above
all things else, is repose towards God,--is not to remain a helpless
sport to every fanatic sot that comes up from the abyss of human vanity,
and claims to hold it captive by the assumption of a new Divine mission.

The objection to the _mythic_ view of Christ's significance, which is
that maintained by Strauss, is, that it violates men's faith in the
integrity of history as a veracious outcome of the providential love and
wisdom which are extant and operative in human affairs. And the
objection to what has been called the _Troubadour_ view of the same
subject, which is that represented by M. Renan, is, that it outrages
men's faith in human character, regarded, if not as habitually, still as
occasionally capable of heroic or consistent veracity. We may safely
argue, then, that neither Strauss nor Renan will possess any long
vitality to human thought. They are both fascinating reading;--the one
for his profound sincerity, or his conviction of a worth in Christianity
so broadly human and impersonal as to exempt it from the obligations of
a literal historic doctrine; the other for his profound insincerity, so
to speak, or an egotism so subtile, so capacious and frank, as permits
him to take up the grandest character in history into the hollow of his
hand, and turn him about there for critical inspection and definite
adjustment to the race, with absolutely no more reverence nor reticence
than a buyer of grain shows to a handful of wheat, as he pours it
dexterously from hand to hand, and blows the chaff in the seller's
face.[G] But both writers alike are left behind us in the library, and
are not subsequently broug