"Believers in miracles should not try to explain them. There is but one way to explain anything, and that is to account for it by natural agencies. The moment you explain a miracle it disappears. You should not depend upon explanation, but assertion. You should not be driven from the field because the miracle is shown to be unreasonable. Neither should you be in the least disheartened if it is shown to be impossible. The possible is not miraculous." Miracles must be dismissed from the domain of fact and relegated to the realm of fiction. A miracle, I repeat, is impossible. Above all this chief of miracles, The Christ, is impossible, and does not, and never did, exist. CHAPTER II. SILENCE OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS. Another proof that the Christ of Christianity is a fabulous and not a historical character is the silence of the writers who lived during and immediately following the time he is said to have existed. That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed--have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him. The following is a list of writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time, that Christ is said to have lived and performed his wonderful works: Josephus, Statius, Philo-Judaeus, Ptolemy, Seneca, Hermogones, Pliny the Elder, Valerius Maximus, Arrian, Appian, Petronius, Theon of Smyrna, Dion Pruseus, Phlegon, Paterculus, Pompon Mela, Suetonius, Quintius Curtius Juvenal, Lucian, Martial, Pausanias, Persius, Valerius Flaccus, Plutarch, Florus Lucius, Justus of Tiberius, Favorinus, Apollonius, Phaedrus, Pliny the Younger, Damis, Tacitus, Aulus Gellius, Quintilian, Columella, Lucanus, Dio Chrysostom, Epictetus, Lysias, Silius Italicus, Appion of Alexandria. Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ.