ted to a few prodigies of genius and learning, which was but little
regarded and understood by the great masses. One common cloud of
ignorance and superstition involved them. At this time Christ came as a
teacher; his appearance was like a rising sun, dispelling the darkness
and blessing the earth with light and heat.

If any man can believe that the son of a carpenter, together with twelve
of the meanest and most illiterate mechanics, unassisted by any
superhuman wisdom and power, should be able to invent and promulgate a
system of theology and ethics the most sublime and perfect, which all
such men as Plato, Aristotle and Cicero had overlooked, and that they,
by their own wisdom, repudiated every false virtue, though universally
admired, and that they admitted every true virtue, though despised and
ridiculed by all the rest of the world--if any man can believe that they
were _impostors_ for no other purpose than the promulgation of truth,
_villains_ for no purpose but to teach honesty, and _martyrs_ with no
prospect of honor or advantage; or that they, as false witnesses, should
have been able, in the course of a few years, to have spread this
religion over the most of the known world, in opposition to the
interests, ambition and prejudices of mankind; that they triumphed over
the power of princes, the intrigues of states, the forces of custom, the
blindness of zeal, the influence of priests, the arguments of orators,
and the philosophy of the world, without any assistance from God, he
must be in possession of more faith than is necessary to make him a
Christian and continues an unbeliever from mere credulity. If the
credulous infidel, whose convictions are without evidence and against
evidence, should, after all, be in the right, and Christianity prove to
be a fable, what harm could ensue from being a Christian? Are Christian
rulers more tyrannical and their Christian subjects more ungovernable?
Are the rich more insolent _when Christianized_? Are poor Christians
most insolent and disorderly? Does Christianity make worse parents and
worse children? Does it make husbands and wives, friends and neighbors
less trustworthy? Does it not make men and women more virtuous and happy
in every situation in life? If Christianity is a fable, it is one the
belief of which retains men and women in a regular and uniform life of
virtue, piety and devotion to truth. It gives support in the hour of
distress, of sickness and death.

"I