Christianity, No Fable 89 few exceptions at most, have regarded Him as sinless? Yet a sinless man had never been seen before nor has ever been beheld since His appearance. Who supplied this Jesus with the superhuman power that performed works only possible to God, and with the superhuman wisdom that fell from His lips, if such wisdom was never spoken but only imagined? It is universally allowed that the power and wisdom of Jesus have never been surpassed or even equalled. Whose was the daring genius that struck out the notion not merely of making atonement for Sin, but of doing this by Christ’s giving His life a ransom for many and demonstrating its reality through His rising from the dead ? These conceptions were so in credible to His followers at the first and have been so un acceptable to natural man since that it is hard to believe any fable-monger would have selected them for his work, even though they had occurred to him. And who suggested the doctrine of a general resurrection at the end of time?—a doctrine to which unaided human science or philosophy has never been able to attain. The impartial reasoner must perceive that in all these themes we are dealing not with purely human thoughts but with thoughts that are divine and that it is idle to talk of them as fabulous or untrue. “God is not a man that He should lie.” He is neither a tyrant that He should seek to oppress men, nor a false priest that He should want to cheat men, nor a novel- writer that He should study to amuse men, but a Father whose dearest interest is to save men, who is Light and in Him is no darkness at all, and whose words are like Himself, the same yesterday, today and forever. II. The second mark of truthfulness in the Christian Scheme is ITS PERFECT ADAPTATION to the end for which it was designed. 1. Assuming for the moment that the Christian System is entirely a product of the human mind, or a pure fabrication,
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