Again: if we include in our examination the other writings of the New Testament, they wholly fail to supply us with any evidence of the superstition or credulity of their authors. On the contrary they are characterized by the marks of uniform good sense. It will be doubtless objected that they, as well as St. Paul, were bad logicians, and that their applications of the Old Testament Scriptures are inapt: but this does not affect their trustworthiness as historians. They were undoubtedly men of great religious fervour, yet they are both sparing in the use of miracles, and when they report them, the miraculous action is never represented as extending beyond the necessities of the case. Their miracles consist of simple acts, as for instance the cure of diseases, but all marvellous superadditions are wanting. It has been urged that in comparing the miracles of the Gospels with other miraculous narratives, we have no right to do more than compare the external miracle of the one with the external miracle of the other; as for instance a resurrection with a resurrection, or a cure of blindness recorded in one with a similar case recorded in another; and not to take into account either the external circumstances or the moral aspect of the miracle. I have elsewhere proved that this position is untenable. But for the purpose of the argument let us here assume that all the circumstances may be the invention of the narrator. If it be so, it proves at any rate the soundness of his judgment and the elevation of his ideas, _i.e._ that it is impossible that he could have been either intensely superstitious or credulous. How is it possible, I ask, for minds which were a prey to such monstrous beliefs as those which we have been considering, to have dramatized miraculous narratives of the elevated type of those contained in the Gospels? Would not all the circumstances with which they invested them be the counter‐part of their own degraded conceptions? But there is one most distinctive phenomenon presented by the Gospels which affords a conclusive proof that neither their authors nor the followers of Jesus could have been a prey to either degrading superstition or credulous fanaticism. I allude to the fact that, whatever theory may be propounded to account for their origin, the Gospels, as a matter of fact, unquestionably contain a delineation of the greatest of all characters, whether actual or ideal, that of Jesus Christ. I shall hereafter draw attention to the portraiture of this character for the purpose of proving that they are veritable historical documents. In this place I refer to it simply for the purpose of proving that their authors and those who invented the alleged fictions of which their contents consist, were possessed of a soundness of judgment which is wholly inconsistent with the truth of the assertion that they were a prey to boundless superstition or credulity.