IN COEEOBOEATION OF PEOFESSOE HUXLEY 93 



have wonderful, even magical, power as literature. 

 They are true, not as history, but as poetry. 



The myth of the resurrection will he kept alive 

 for ages to come, notwithstanding all that has been 

 or can be urged against it, because mankind have 

 such a profound interest in believing it. 



Christianity does not offer a system of philosophy, 

 but a religious incentive. When it attempts to play 

 the r61e of interpreter of the visible order of the 

 universe, or to satisfy our rational faculties, its fail- 

 ure is pathetic ; its proofs are childish ; its science 

 is essentially pagan ; its story of the fall as an ex- 

 planation of the origin of evil, and its "plan of salva- 

 tion " as a means of escape from that evil, as science, 

 do not rise above any of the delusions of the pagan 

 world. The story of the Chaldee god, Bel, who cut 

 off his own head, moistened the clay with his blood, 

 and then made man out of it, is just as rational an 

 explanation of the origin of man as the one the 

 Christian church has always adhered to. In fact, 

 the whole basis of our theology, the conception of 

 Jesus as a supernatural person who had no earthly 

 father, and who rose from the dead and ascended 

 bodily up into heaven, etc., is essentially pagan, 

 and belongs to an order of things that has long 

 since passed away. The power of Christianity is 

 a spiritual power ; it is in its appeals to the ideal 

 of the gentle, the merciful, the meek, the forgiv- 

 ing, the pure in heart — an ideal which has such 

 an attraction for the European nations ; and also to 

 the love of reward and the fear of punishment which 



