The most extreme of the School that I am opposing concede that the four most important epistles of St. Paul are unquestionably genuine, and written by him within less than thirty years after the resurrection. The genuineness of at least four others is conceded by the most eminent unbelievers. We have, then, before us genuine historical documents of Christianity, composed by its most active missionary at about the same distance of time from the resurrection as that which separates us from the repeal of the Corn Law Act. Now by the aid of these epistles it is possible to prove by a multitude of incidental allusions that all the great features of the portraiture of Jesus Christ were fully developed when St. Paul wrote them. Nay, what is more, the manner in which the allusions are made prove that this portraiture was not a new one, but that it had been long known in the Christian Society. To exhibit this proof would require a lecture of equal length to the present. As I have given it already elsewhere,[112] and it has not been assailed, I shall assume that my position is incontestable. The period of time during which the human Jesus must have been developed into the divine Christ of the Gospels, if the portraiture be a fictitious creation, must be reduced to one of less than ten years. But whether it be ten, seventy, or one hundred and thirty, it contradicts the laws by which all human developments are regulated. Its creation involves a moral miracle of the most stupendous character. My opponents postulate a number of conditions which history and philosophy refuse to concede. They require a long interval of time; history will only grant them a short one. They require that developments should be rapid; they are always slow, especially moral ones. They require the creation of elevated moral sentiment; their only instruments with which to work are credulous mythologists. They require that developments should be always progressive towards higher perfection; history declares that they are frequently retrograde ones. They postulate party spirit, but it produces endless division. They require compromises, but they must be made by credulous enthusiasts. They require unity of result; they postulate a multitude of agents. They ask for credulity, and are confronted by sobriety. They ask for seventy years; historical fact will concede them less than ten. They deny physical miracles, and ask us to believe in moral ones. Such is the position of the school of thought against whom I have been reasoning. They are called by a sad misnomer rationalistic. I ask, are these theories rational, probable, or possible? Defenders of revelation have no grounds for dreading an appeal to reason. If the Gospels, and the glorious Christ therein delineated, have been evolved in accordance with the various theories against which I have been contending, it involves a greater miracle than all the miracles of the New Testament united together.[181]