Dean Milman says:

It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.

Bishop Fell says:

In the first ages of the Church, so extensive was the license of forging, so credulous were the people in believing, that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured.

John E. Remsburg, author of the newly published American book, The Bible, says:

That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tactily admitted by all Christians. They characterize as forgeries, or unworthy of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.

Mr. Lecky, the historian, in his European Morals, writes in the following uncompromising style:

The very large part that must be assigned to deliberate forgeries in the early apologetic literature of the Church we have already seen; and no impartial reader can, I think, investigate the innumerable grotesque and lying legends that, during the whole course of the Middle Ages, were deliberately palmed upon mankind as undoubted facts, can follow the history of the false decretals, and the discussions that were connected with them, or can observe the complete and absolute incapacity most Catholic historians have displayed of conceiving any good thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great German historian (Herder) to declare, with much bitterness, that the phrase "Christian veracity" deserves to rank with the phrase "Punic faith."

I could go on quoting such passages. I could give specific instances of forgery by the dozen, but I do not think it necessary. It is sufficient to show that forgery was common, and has been always common, amongst all kinds of priests, and that therefore we cannot accept the Gospels as genuine and unaltered documents.

Yet upon these documents rests the whole fabric of Christianity.

Professor Huxley says:

There is no proof, nothing more than a fair presumption, that any one of the Gospels existed, in the state in which we find it in the authorized version of the Bible, before the second century, or, in other words, sixty or seventy years after the events recorded. And between that time and the date of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Gospels there is no telling what additions and alterations and interpolations may have been made. It may be said that this is all mere speculation, but it is a good deal more. As competent scholars and honest men, our revisers have felt compelled to point out that such things have happened even since the date of the oldest known manuscripts. The oldest two copies of the second Gospel end with the eighth verse of the sixteenth chapter; the remaining twelve verses are spurious, and it is noteworthy that the maker of the addition has not hesitated to introduce a speech in which Jesus promises His disciples that "in My name shall they cast out devils."

The other passage "rejected to the margin is still more instructive. It is that touching apologue, with its profound ethical sense, of the woman taken in adultery- which, if internal evidence were an infallible guide, might well be affirmed to be a typical example of the teachings of Jesus. Yet, say the revisers, pitilessly, "Most of the ancient authorities omit John vii. 53-viii. 11." Now, let any reasonable man ask himself this question: If, after an approximate settlement of the canon of the New Testament, and even later than the fourth and fifth centuries, literary fabricators had the skill and the audacity to make such additions and interpolations as these, what may they have done when no one had thought of a canon; when oral tradition, still unfixed, was regarded as more valuable than such written records as may have existed in the latter portion of the first century? Or, to take the other alternative, if those who gradually settled the canon did not know of the oldest codices which have come down to us; or if, knowing them, they rejected their authority, what is to be thought of their competency as critics of the text?

Since alterations have been made in the text of Scripture we can never be certain that any particular text is genuine, and this circumstance militates seriously against the value of the evidence for the Resurrection.

CHRISTIANITY BEFORE CHRIST

If the story of Christ's life were true, we should not expect to find that nearly all the principal events of that life had previously happened in the lives of some earlier god or gods, long since acknowledged to be mythical.

If the Gospel record were the only record of a god coming upon earth, of a god born of a virgin, of a god slain by men, that record would seem to us more plausible than it will seem if we discover proof that other and earlier gods have been fabled to have come on earth, to have been born of virgins, to have lived and taught on earth, and to have been slain by men.

Because, if the events related in the life of Christ have been previously related as parts of the lives of earlier mythical gods, we find ourselves confronted by the possibilities that what is mythical in one narrative may be mythical in another; that if one god is a myth another god may be a myth; that if 400,000,000 of Buddhists have been deluded, 200,000,000 of Christians may be deluded; that if the events of Christ's life were alleged to have happened before to another person, they may have. been adopted from the older story, and made features of the new.

If Christ was God - the omnipotent, eternal, and only God - come on earth, He would not be likely to repeat acts, to re-act the adventures of earlier and spurious gods; nor would His divine teachings be mere shreds and patches made up of quotations, paraphrases, and repeti

tions of earlier teachings, uttered by mere mortals, or mere myths.

What are we to think, then, when we find that there are hardly any events in the life of Christ which were not, before His birth, attributed to mythical gods; that there are hardly any acts of Christ's which may not be paralleled by acts attributed to mythical gods before His advent; that there are hardly any important thoughts attributed to Christ which had not been uttered by other men, or by mythical gods, in earlier times? What are we to think if the facts be thus?

Mr. Parsons, in Our Sun God, quotes the following passage from a Latin work by St. Augustine:

Again, in that I said, "This is in our time the Christian religion, which to know and also follow is most sure and certain salvation," it is affirmed in regard to this name, not in_regard to the sacred thing itself to which the name belongs. For the sacred thing which is now called the Christian religion existed in ancient times, nor indeed, was it absent from the beginning of the human race until the Christ Himself came in the flesh, whence the true religion, which already existed, came to be called "the Christian." So when, after His resurrection and ascension to heaven, the Apostles began to preach and many believed, it is thus written, "The followers were first called Christians at Antioch." Therefore I said, "This is in our time the Christian religion," not because it did not exist in earlier times, but as having in later times received this particular name.

From Eusebius, the great Christian historian, Mr. Parsons quotes as follows:

What is called the Christian religion is neither new nor strange, but-if it be lawful to testify as to the truth—was known to the ancients.

Mr. Arthur Lillie, in Buddha and Buddhism, quotes M. Burnouf as saying:

History and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly that creeds grow slowly up. None came into the world ready-made, and as if by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great Indian poet has said: "The be

ginning of things evades us; their end evades us also; we see only the middle."

Before Darwin's day it was considered absurd and impious to talk of "pre-Adamite man," and it will still, by many, be held absurd and impious to talk of "Christianity before Christ."

And yet the incidents of the life and death of Christ, the teachings of Christ and His Apostles, and the rites and mysteries of the Christian Church can all be paralleled by similar incidents, ethics, and ceremonies embodied in religions long anterior to the birth of Jesus.

Christ is said to have been God come down upon the earth. The idea of a god coming down upon the earth was quite an old and popular idea at the time when the Gospels were written. In the Old Testament God makes many visits to the earth; and the instances in the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythologies of gods coming amongst men and taking part in human affairs are well known.

Christ is said to have been the Son of God. But the idea of a son-god is very much older than the Christian religion.

Christ is said to have been a redeemer, and to have descended from a line of kings. But the idea of a king's son as a redeemer is very much older than the Christian religion.

Christ is said to have been born of a virgin. But many heroes before Him were declared to have been born of virgins.

Christ is said to have been born in a cave or stable while His parents were on a journey. But this also was an old legend long before the Christian religion.

Christ is said to have been crucified. But very many