236 £SSAyS IN PHILOSOPHY 



mony ? That these testimonies of presumed and 

 declared ear-witnesses have been securely and in- 

 errantly transmitted from generation to generation 

 for hundreds of years : on the one theory, by the 

 unbroken consensus of tradition in the Church ; on 

 the other, by the unbroken preservation of the in- 

 spired record in the Scriptures. 



But now we come to the crucial point : What alone 

 can all this, in its parts and in the whole of it, — 

 even supposing the testimony to be flawless, — what 

 alone can it establish? At most, that there was an 

 ever-memorable and indeed stupendous Declaration, 

 that a few believed it, and that many, on their tes- 

 timony, have believed what those few believed. 

 Whatever else may be true, it must be assumed 

 in all this inquiry that Jesus was a real man, and 

 spoke as a man. Well, then, how is it possible that 

 the simple declaration of any man should establish 

 the truth of it } Above all, how can the declara- 

 tion of any man that he is the Living God prove 

 him actually and verily to be so } Not even the 

 word of Jesus could, in itself, prove anything more 

 than that he believed he was God, — supposing for 

 the sake of argument, I repeat, that he really said he 

 was God, with the intention that he should be un- 

 derstood literally. Not all the testimony of all the 

 saints that they heard this declaration, could in it- 

 self prove anything more than that they did so 



