Christianity, No Fable 369 brightness of His Glory and the express image of His Per son, into this world in the likeness of sinful flesh, to die for men’s sins, thereby rendering satisfaction for the same, and to rise again from the dead, thereby showing that God had accepted the Sacrifice and could on the ground of it be just and the justifier of the ungodly, as well as bringing life and immortality to light; and (3) that on the ground of this atoning work Salvation is offered to all on the sole condition of faith. This being so, can any one for a moment believe that forgers and fable-mongers would or could have invented so divine a tale? All experience certifies the contrary. Whensoever men have attempted to construct schemes of Salvation, they have not sought the origin of these schemes in God but in themselves. Human schemes have always been plans by which men might be able to save themselves, with such salvation as they have supposed themselves to need—not always a Salvation from sin and death; more frequently a salvation from material poverty, bodily discomfort, mental ignorance and generally temporal needs. Nor have they ever dreamt of a salvation that should come to them through the mediation of another, and certainly not of God Himself in the Person of His Son ; but always of a salvation through their own efforts. Never of a Salvation by grace through faith and therefore free; but always of a Salvation by works and through merit and therefore as a debt—a Salyation by out ward forms and magical rites, or by education and culture. WHO INVENTED IT ? 3. Then, it may be added: If the Christian Scheme is a fable, who invented the idea of an Incarnation? For to Jewish minds at any rate such an idea was foreign, being forbidden by their strong monotheism. Who put together thè picture of Jesus as it appears in the Gospels? Who conceived the notion of making it that of a sinless man, and doing it so suc cessfully that all subsequent generations of beholders, with a
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