THE monstrous scientific paradox (as coming ages will regard it)
comprehended in the conception of an almighty, omnipresent, and infinite
Being, "the Creator of innumerable worlds," ("by him [Christ] were all
things made that were made," John i. 3-10), being born of a frail and
finite woman, as taught by both the oriental and Christian religion, is
so exceedingly shocking to every rational mind, which has not been sadly
warped, perverted, and coerced into the belief by early psychological
influence, that we would naturally presume that those who, on the
assumption of the remotest possibility of its truth, should venture
to put forth a doctrine so glaringly unreasonable and so obviously
untenable, would of course vindicate it and establish it by the
strongest arguments and by the most unassailable and most irrefragable
proofs; and that in setting forth a doctrine so manifestly at war with
every law and analogy of nature and every principle of science, no
language should have been used, nor the slightest admission made,
that could possibly lead to the slightest degree of suspicion that the
original authors and propagators of this doctrine had either any doubt
of the truth of the doctrine themselves, or were wanting in the most
ample, the most abundant proof to sustain it. No language, no text,
not a word, not a syllable should have been used making the most remote
concession damaging to the validity of the doctrine, so that not "the
shadow of a shade of doubt" could be left on any mind of its truth.
Omnipotent indeed should be the logic, and irresistible the proof,
in support of a thesis or a doctrine which so squarely confronts and
contradicts all the observation, all the experience, the whole range
of scientific knowledge, and the common sense of mankind. How startling
then, to every devout and honest professor of the Christian faith ought
to be the recent discovery of the fact, that the great majority of the
texts having any bearing upon the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus
Christ,--a large majority of the passages in the very book on which the
doctrine is predicated, and which is acknowledged as the sole warranty
for such a belief,--are actually at variance with the doctrine, and
actually amount to its virtual denial and overthrow. For we find, upon
a critical examination of the matter, that at least three-fourths of the
texts, both in the Gospels and Epistles, which relate to the divinity
of Christ, specifically or by implication either teach a different and
a contrary doctrine, or make concessions entirely fatal to it, by
investing him with finite human qualities utterly incompatible with the
character and attributes of a divine or infinite Being. How strange,
then, how superlatively strange, that millions should yet hold to such
a strange "freak of nature," such a dark relic of oriental heathenism,
such a monstrously foolish and childish superstition, as that which
teaches the infinite Creator and "Upholder of the universe" could
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