Now Thomas Paine was, in a way, an honest man. We can say that of him. Voltaire was, in his degree, honest too. Having said what M. Renan says, they did not stultify themselves logically. They honestly pronounced Christianity a delusion. We have respect for their consistency. But our modern man says that a cheat in religion is no cheat, a lie no lie, that a true saving faith can be built on a foundation of deception and trickery! He says it, and undertakes to prove it by _the convincing logic of sentimentality!_ M. Renan here is just _disgusting_. There are a few things in this world that do not mix. Right and wrong have something of a ditch between them. A lie is not own brother to the truth. If he thinks it worth while to write the life of an impostor, very well; only, when he has declared him so, and insisted on his being so, we humbly beg he will not turn round and insist on it that the religion _he_ taught is divine! If the credulity of believers is great, what shall we say of the credulity of Messieurs the philosophers, the unbelievers? But what shall we say of their _morality_? But if this new theory fails to account for Christianity as a _true_ system of religion, what shall we say of its coherence with Christianity as a _successful_ system in action? This sentimental impostor conquers the civilized world. This 'charming' worker of sham wonders becomes a GOD to the millions who to-day lead mankind! Here is where M. Renan's theory utterly breaks down, where it becomes not only utterly illogical and incoherent, but where it becomes too gross for any mortal credulity, and too blasphemously wicked for any ordinary sinfulness. It is utterly incoherent, for it requires us to believe that a system, begun in fraud and deception, has proved itself the truest and most beneficent and sacred treasure to the world. M. Renan insists on both. From such a premise he drags such a conclusion. Is there any plain Christian who dreads a sneer at Christian credulity? Let him be comforted. What credulity is like this? What miracle in the 'Four Gospels' begins to be wonderful compared with this miracle of the modern thaumaturge? The religion which has taught men truth--above all things, _truth_--which teaches utter horror of a lie, which insists on the bare, bald reality in heaven and earth, which has taught men hatred of the false as the meanest and most unmanly thing existing--this religion took its rise in claptrap miracles, was puffed into popularity by boasting pretensions, was born in trickery and nurtured by legerdemain! Its loftiest hopes, its deepest consolations are the offspring of clumsy jugglery and cheap prestidigitation!