century ago, left,
in the estimate of every one, an infidel in puris naturalibus. Like his
German acquaintances, he accepts the infidel paradoxes--only, like them,
he will still be a Christian. He believes, with Strauss, that a miracle
is an impossibility and contradiction--'incredible per se.' As to the
inspiration of Christ--he regards it as, in its nature, the same as that
of Zoraster, Confucius, Mahomet, Plato, Luther, and Wickliffe--a curious
assortment of 'heroic souls.'(Pp. 62, 63.) With a happy art of confusing
the 'gifts of genius' no matter whether displayed in intellectual or
moral power, and of forgetting that other men are not likely to overlook
the difference, he complacently declares 'the wisdom of Solomon and the
poetry of Isaiah the fruit of the same inspiration which is popularly
attributed to Milton or Shakspeare, or even to the homely wisdom of
Benjamin Franklin' (P. 72.) in the same pleasant confusion of mind, he
thinks that the 'pens of Plato, of Paul and of Dante, the pencils of
Raphael and of Claude, the Chisels of Canova and of Chantrey, no less
than the voices of Knox of Wickliffe, and of Luther are ministering
instruments, in different degrees, of the same spirit.' (P. 77.) He
thinks that 'we find, both in the writers and the records of Scripture,
every evidence of human infirmity that can possibly be conceived; and
yet we are to believe that God himself specially inspired them with
false philosophy, vicious logic, and bad grammar.'(P. 74.) He denies
the originality both of the Christian ethic (which he says are a gross
plagiarism from Plato) as also in great part of the system of Christian
doctrine.* Nevertheless, it would be quite a mistake, it seems, to
suppose that Mr. Foxton is no Christian! He is, on the contrary, of
the very few who can tell us what Christianity really is; and who can
separate the falsehoods and the myths which have so long disguised it.
He even talks most spiritually and with an edifying onction. He tells us
"God was," indeed, "in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." And
but little deduction need be made from the rapturous language of Paul,
who tells us that "in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily"
(P. 65); I concede to Christ' (generous admission!) 'the highest
inspiration hitherto granted to the prophets of God' (P. 143),--Mahomet,
it appears, and Zoroaster and Confucius, having also statues in his
truly Catholic Pantheon. 'The position of Christ,