to doubt," said the
other. And now, as they proceeded to give each his own solution of
the difficulty, the scene became comic in the extreme. The Rationalist
ridiculed the notion that nations and races, all of whom, in the nature
of things, must have been prejudiced against such myths as those of
Christianity, could originate or would believe them; and still more,
the notion that in so short a space of time these wildest of wild
legends (if legends at all) could induce the world to acquiesce
in them as historic realities! In his zeal he even said, that,
though not altogether satisfied with it, he would sooner believe
all the frigid glosses by which the school of Paulus had endeavored
to resolve the miracles into misunderstood "natural phenomena." As
the dispute became more animated between these three champions, they
exhibited a delicate trait of human nature, which I saw our sceptical
host most maliciously enjoyed. Each became more anxious to prove that
his mode of proving Christianity false was the true mode, than to
prove the falsehood of Christianity itself. "I tell you what," said
the Straussian, with some warmth, "sooner than believe all the
absurdities of such an hypothesis as that of Paulus, I could believe
Christianity to be what it professes to be." "I may say the same of
that of Strauss," said the other, with equal asperity; "if I had no
better escape than his, I could say to him, as Agippa to Paul, 'Almost
thou persuadest me to be a Christian.'" "For my part," exclaimed the
Deist, who was perfectly contented with his brief solution,--the
difficulties of the problem he had never had the patience to master,
--"I should rather say, as Festus to Paul, 'Much learning has made
you both mad': and sooner than believe the impossibilities of the
theory of either,--sooner than suppose men honestly and guilelessly
to have misled the world by a book which you and I admit to be a
tissue of fables, legends, and mystical non-sense,--I could almost
find it in my heart to go over to the Pope himself."

"Good," whispered our host to me, who sat at his left hand; "we shall
have them all becoming Christians, by and by, just to spite one
another." The admirer of Mr. Atkinson and Miss Martineau here
reminded the company that the miracles of the New Testament might be
true,--only the result of mesmerism. "Christ," said he, "to employ
the words of Mr. Atkinson, was constitutionally a clairvoyant .....
Prophecy and miracle and insp