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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



the necessary conditions, we must always obtain 

 extreme cases, which do not contradict, but con- 

 firm, the general law. One comet has the most 

 eccentric orbit ; one man the most gigantic stat- 

 ure ; one artist the loftiest and finest genius. But 

 the comet obeys the laws of gravitation as rigor- 

 ously as the most domestic planet ; the giant is a 

 physiological curiosity, but does not imply any 

 exception to physiological rules; and we admit 

 that the genius of a Phidias implies, not the in- 

 carnation of a god, but the occurrence of a spe- 

 cial set of social and other conditions. A giant 

 one thousand feet in height, made of ordinary 

 flesh and blood, would be an impossibility, or, in 

 other words, his existence would be miraculous ; 

 but giants of eight or nine feet have existed, and 

 may therefore exist, without implying any breach 

 of natural law. The question of their possibility 

 must be decided by our knowledge, derived by 

 ordinary scientific processes, of the nature of flesh 

 and blood and the limits of the variability of the 

 species. Similarly, to prove the divinity of Christ 

 by such reasoning, we must prove the superiority of 

 Christ and of Christian morality to be not simply 

 unmistakable, but to be so great that it is beyond 

 the reach of the most exceptional nature placed 

 under the most exceptional circumstances ; and, 

 further, if the divinity of the Teacher is to be es- 

 tablished, this superiority must be so great as to 

 be fairly called infinite. Briefly, then, the be- 

 liever denies, while the unbeliever asserts, that 

 under appropriate conditions human nature may 

 produce a Christ without any breach of the ordi- 

 nary laws, though it may be that we are in pres- 

 ence of an extreme case of those laws. The test 

 by which the validity of either conclusion must 

 be established is the correspondence of the rival 

 theories with our independent knowledge of man- 

 kind. Hence it is easy to note the assumptions 

 involved. The unbeliever, basing his judgment 

 upon experience, has formed his estimate of hu- 

 man nature from the facts before him. He sees 

 that the race has produced many great religious 

 teachers, among whom he may (or may not) reck- 

 on Christ to be the foremost. He believes that 

 his creed can produce a Christ, because it has 

 produced a Christ. It might conceivably appear 

 that the classification of Christ as a man was er- 

 roneous, and that there was an insuperable gulf 

 between him and all who externally resembled 

 him. The unbeliever denies the existence of this 

 discrepancy, and holds that, though Christ may 

 exceed the ordinary stature even more distinctly 

 than Phidias exceeded the average sculptor or 

 Shakespeare the average poet, the excess does 



not exceed the recognized limits of variability of 

 the race, as inferred from observation. Genius 

 exists, and Christ was (on this hypothesis) the 

 greatest of moral geniuses. The procedure of the 

 believer is different. He has assumed, more or 

 less explicitly, that all virtue is supernatural ; 

 that Christianity and Judaism represent the true 

 light which comes from God, of which a few scat- 

 tered beams alone have fallen upon other creeds. 

 Human nature, then, is merely the residuum left, 

 when all good impulses are assumed to come 

 from without. Our nature, in this pure phrase, is 

 corrupt ; our heart is deceitful above all things, 

 and desperately wicked. From ourselves comes 

 nothing but lust, hatred, and the love of dark- 

 ness. It is only consistent to infer, when this has 

 been assumed, that human nature cannot produce 

 a Christ. But, when this has been assumed, the 

 question has been begged. Instead of framing 

 our theory from instances actually observed, in- 

 cluding Christ, it has been framed by summarily 

 excluding all great teachers as either the direct 

 or indirect channels of a supernatural impulse. 

 Christ must be God, because all men are devils. 



The skepticism involved in such " belief" is 

 obvious. It implies a denial of the natural good- 

 ness of man — a refusal to believe that purity, love, 

 and heroism, of a certain order can spring sponta- 

 neously in the soil of human nature. "Where such 

 growths are to be found, the^ must be taken to 

 have been transplanted from a supernatural para- 

 dise. They are the sporadic plants which have 

 strayed beyond the guarded walls of Eden, and 

 can only struggle against the foul, indigenous prod- 

 ucts by the constant care of the Divine Gardener. 

 Every living theology is saturated with such skep- 

 ticism ; for our conviction of the necessity of su- 

 pernatural aid is measured by our sense of human 

 impotence. The doctrine of the corruption of 

 human nature is the central doctrine of all vigor- 

 ous theological creeds. The belief in God is, in 

 this sense, simply the opposite pole of disbelief in 

 man. They are reciprocal dogmas, allied as the 

 light and the shadow. The doctrines of redemp- 

 tion and the atonement are realized in proportion 

 as this need is felt, and die away or are National- 

 ized into sheer no-meaning wherever it becomes 

 faint. And therefore the belief in the supernatu- 

 ral character of a religion is but the other side of 

 a skepticism as to human virtue, when not repos. 

 ing upon a supernatural basis, enlightened by su- 

 pernatural revelation, and stimulated by hopes 

 and fears of a supernatural world. 



This brings us in sight of that ground of hos- 

 tility to "unbelief" which has the greatest weight 



