er passes the limits of the race which has originated
it; and that you can hardly get another race even to look at it as
a matter of philosophic curiosity! You ask me to believe that this
system was received by multitudes among many different races, both
of Asia and Europe, without force, when a similar phenomenon has
never been witnessed in relation to any mythology whatever! Thus,
after asking me to burden myself with a thousand perplexities to
account for the origin of these fables, you afterwards burden me with
a thousand more, to account for their success! Lastly, you ask me to
believe, not only that men of different races and countries became
bigotedly attached to legends which none were likely to originate,
which all were likely to hate, and, most of all, those who are supposed
to have originated them; but that they received them as historic facts,
when the known recency of their origin must have shown the world that
they were the legendary birth of yesterday; and that they acted thus,
though those who propagated these legends had no military power no civil
authority, no philosophy, no science, no one instrument of human success
to aid them, while the opposing prejudices which everywhere
encountered them had! I really know not how to believe all this.

"There are certainly many difficulties in the matter" candidly replied
my infidel friend. But, as if wishing to effect a diversion,--"Have you
ever read Gibbon's celebrated chapter?"

Why, yes, I told him, two or three years before; but he does not say a
syllable in solution of my chief difficulties; he does not tell me any
thing as to the origin of the ideas of Christianity, nor who could
have written the wonderful books in which they are embodied; besides,
said I, in my simplicity, he yields the point, by allowing miracles to
be the most potent cause of the success of Christianity.

"Ah" he replied, "but every one can see that he is there speaking
ironically."

Why, then, said I, laughing, I fear he is telling us how the success
of Christianity cannot be accounted for, rather than how it can.

"O, but he gives you the secondary causes; which it is easy to see
he considers the principal; and also sufficient."

I will read him again, I said, and with deep attention. Some time
after, in meeting with the same friend, I began upon Gibbon's secondary
causes.

"They have given you satisfaction, I hope."

Any thing but that, I replied; they do not, as I said bef