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Every one will see how weak and inapplicable this is to the 
miracles of Christ, including His own resurrection. 
Still he sees no absolute improbability in miracles. 
“ Admit God, and you may admit miracles,” he says ; and 
from this severely logical thinker this admission should be 
remembered. 
Again, “ The conclusion I draw is that miracles have no 
claim whatever to the character of historical facts, and are 
useless as evidences of any revelation.” 
Surely, in connection with the preceding admission, we may 
well ask why the miracles which are included in the historical 
narration, and cannot be extracted without tearing the whole 
to pieces and destroying the historical value of the whole, 
should not be received as historical facts ? 
One more extract about the Gospel of St. John and I have 
done with Mr. Mill. “ What could be added and interpolated 
by a disciple we may see in the mystical part of the Gospel 
of St. John, matter imported from Philo and the Alexandrian 
Platonists, and put into the mouth of the Saviour in long 
speeches about himself, such as the other gospels contain not 
the slightest vestige of, though pretended to have been de- 
livered on occasions of the deepest interest and when His 
principal followers were all present; most prominently in the 
last supper. The East was full of men who could have stolen 
any quantity of this poor stuff, as the multitudinous Oriental 
sects of Gnostics afterwards did.” 
The only remark I will make on this ill-written and offen- 
sive sentence is that it seems to assume the authenticity of 
St. John’s Gospel. Renan made the same admission in his 
Life of Jesus, and the German critics found this a fatal 
obstacle to the reception of his views. 
I have already, I fear, wearied you with Mill, but I 
must, for the purpose of giving you a sufficiently correct 
picture of the degradation of religious belief in circles 
called philosophical, read a few extracts also from Strauss’s 
recently published work entitled, The Old and the New Faith. 
I have selected a few extracts for the purpose of exhibiting, 
in as few words as possible, the absolute repudiation by this 
writer of all religious belief whatever in the latter years of 
his life. Thus, “ An object of religious adoration must be a 
Divinity, and thinking men have long sinco ceased to regard 
the founder of Christianity as such.” 
Again, “ My conviction is that, if we would not evade 
difficulties, or put forced constructions upon them ; in short, 
if we would speak as honest, upright men, we must acknow- 
ledge we aro no longer Christians.” 
