CHAPTER XV III CHRISTIANITY, NO FABLE BY REV. THOMAS WHITELAW, M. A., X>. D., KILMARNOCK, SCOTLAND I. The first mark of the truthfulness of Christianity is to be found in ITS SUPREME EXCELLENCE as a Religious System. The unapproachable beauty and re sistless charm of its conception, and the unique character of the means by which it seeks to carry out its aims, are not rec oncilable with the notion of Fable. If, however, notwithstanding, Christianity is a Fable, then it is the Divinest Fable ever clothed in human speech. Nothing like it can be found in the literature of the world. Paul only spoke the unvarnished truth when he declared that eye had not seen nor ear heard, neither had the mind of man con ceived the things which God had revealed to men in the Gospel. NOT OF HUMAN ORIGIN 1. The very conception of the Gospel as a scheme for rescuing a lost world from the guilt and power of Sin, for transforming men into servants of righteousness, followers of Christ, and children of God, each one resembling Himself and partaking of His nature, and for eventually lifting them up into a state of holy and blessed immortality like that in which He Himself dwells—that conception never took its. rise in the brains of a human fable monger, and least of all in that of a crafty priest or political deceiver—no, not even in that of the best and most brilliantly endowed thinker, poet, prophet or philosopher that ever lived. Men do not write novels and com pose fictions in order to redeem their fellows from guilt and 367
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