"I have lately studied the whole thing carefully,".. he resumed presently, . . "and I see no reason why we, who call ourselves a progressive generation, should revert back to the old theory of Corinthus, who, as early as sixty-seven years after Christ, denied His Divinity. There is nothing new in the hypothesis--it is no more original than the doctrine of evolution, which was skilfully enough handled by Democritus, and probably by many another before him. Voltaire certainly threshed out the subject exhaustively, . . and I think Carlyle's address to him on the uselessness of his work is one of the finest of its kind. Do you remember it?"
Villiers shook his head in the negative, whereupon Alwyn rose, and glancing along an evidently well-remembered book-shelf, took from thence "Sartor Resartus"--and turned over the pages quickly.
"Here it is,"--and he read out the following passage.. "'Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire, . . shut thy sweet voice; for the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or otherwise: That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little! But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody the Divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? Only a torch for burning and no hammer for building? Take our thanks then--and thyself away!'"
Villiers smiled, and straightened himself in military fashion, as was his habit when particularly gratified.
"Excellent old Teufelsdrockh!" he murmured sotto-voce--"He had a rugged method of explaining himself, but it was decisive enough, in all conscience!"
"Decisive, and to the point,".. assented Alwyn, putting the book back in its place, and then confronting his friend.--"And he states precisely what is wanted by the world to-day,--wanted pressingly, eagerly, . . namely that the 'Divine Spirit' of the Christian Religion should be set forth in a 'new vehicle and vesture' to keep pace with the advancing inquiry and scientific research of man. And truly for this, it need only be expounded according to its old, pure, primal, spiritual intention, and then, the more science progresses the more true will it be proved. Christ distinctly claimed His Divinity, and everywhere gave manifestations of it. Of course it can be said that these manifestations rest on TESTIMONY,--and that the 'testimony' was drawn up afterward and is a spurious invention--but we have no more proof that it IS spurious than we have of [Footnote: See Chapter XIII. "In Al-Kyris"--the allusion to "Oruzel."] Homer's Iliad being a compilation of several writers and not the work of a Homer at all. Nothing--not even the events of the past week--can be safely rested on absolute, undiffering testimony, inasmuch as no two narrators tell the same story alike. But all the same we HAVE the Iliad,--it cannot be taken from us by any amount of argument, . . and we have the FRUITS of Christ's gospel, half obscured as it is, visible among us. Everywhere civilization of a high and aspiring order has followed Christianity even at the cost of blood and tears, ..slavery has been abolished, and women lifted from unspeakable degradation to honor and reverence,--and had men been more reasonable and self-controlled, the purifying work would have been done peacefully and without persecution. It was St. Paul's preaching that upset all the beautiful, pristine simplicity of the faith,--it is very evident he had no 'calling or election' such as he pretended, . . I wonder Jeremy Bentham's conclusive book on the subject is not more universally known. Paul's sermonizing gave rise to a thousand different shades of opinion and argument, --and for a mere hair's-breadth of needless discussion, nation has fought against nation, and man against man, till the very name of religion has been made a ghastly mockery. That, however, is not the fault of Christianity, but the fault of those who PROFESS to follow it, like Paul, while merely following a scheme of their own personal advantage or convenience, . . and the result of it all is that at this very moment, there is not a church in Christendom where Christ's actual commands are really and to the letter fulfilled."