If any one will answer these questions for me with something more to the
point than feeble talk about the "cowardice of agnosticism," I shall be
deeply his debtor. Unless and until they are satifactorily answered, I
say of agnosticism in this matter, "_J'y suis, et j'y reste._"
But, as we have seen, it is asserted that I have no business to call
myself an agnostic; that, if I am not a Christian I am an infidel; and
that I ought to call myself by that name of "unpleasant significance."
Well, I do not care much what I am called by other people, and if I had
at my side all those who, since the Christian era, have been called
infidels by other folks, I could not desire better company. If these are
my ancestors, I prefer, with the old Frank to be with them wherever they
are. But there are several points in Dr. Wace's contention which must be
elucidated before I can even think of undertaking to carry out his
wishes. I must, for instance, know what a Christian is. Now what is a
Christian? By whose authority is the signification of that term defined?
Is there any doubt that the immediate followers of Jesus, the "sect of
the Nazarenes," were strictly orthodox Jews differing from other Jews
not more than the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes differed
from one another, in fact, only in the belief that the Messiah, for whom
the rest of their nation waited, had come? Was not their chief, "James,
the brother of the Lord," reverenced alike by Sadducee, Pharisee, and
Nazarene? At the famous conference which, according to the Acts, took
place at Jerusalem, does not James declare that "myriads" of Jews, who
by that time, had become Nazarenes, were "all zealous for the Law"? Was
not the name of "Christian" first used to denote the converts to the
doctrine promulgated by Paul and Barnabas at Antioch? Does the
subsequent history of Christianity leave any doubt that, from this time
forth, the "little rift within the lute" caused by the new teaching,
developed, if not inaugurated, at Antioch, grew wider and wider, until
the two types of doctrine irreconcilably diverged? Did not the primitive
Nazarenism, or Ebionism, develop into the Nazarenism, and Ebionism, and
Elkasaitism of later ages, and finally die out in obscurity and
condemnation, as damnable heresy; while the younger doctrine throve and
pushed out its shoots into that endless variety of sects, of which the
three strongest survivors are the Roman and Greek Churches and modern
Protestantism?
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