Minerva from the head of Jupiter, the fiction sprung from the brains of the early Christian priests.

The translation of "Strauss' Life of Jesus," in weekly numbers, at a price within the reach of all our readers, renders it unnecessary that we should quote largely from his work in support of our position that the whole story about Jesus, if not purely ideal, is practically so; for, as to pure idealism, in the strict sense, perhaps we could find no such thing were we to ransack the histories of Buddha, Vichnou, Adonis, Mithra, or any other wonderful mangods. When Strauss declares, with regard to the story of the miraculous conception, that "God could not have had a sufficient motive to suspend a natural law established by himself, unless to obtain results unworthy of him ;"* and replies to the objection that the end of the redemption exacted the purity of Jesus by the exclusion from all participation in the work of begetting, of a sinful father, by saying "that if the maternal participation remained (which it evidently does, according to the Evangelists), in order to obtain the purity supposed to be necessary, we admit another divine operation, which purified the Virgin Mary from the moment of her conception-else would Jesus have been stained by the sin of his mother; but if God purified, in that fashion, the mother, it would have been much more simple to have done as much for the father, than by excluding the latter, and by performing himself the paternal task, overthrow so glaringly the Laws of Nature!" The same author says, "We should bear in mind the phrase of Plutarch, No woman has ever pretended to become a mother without knowing a man, apply it to the impossible of Cerinthe; for it is physiologically certain that the concurrence of two human bodies of different sexes is necessary in order that the germ of the new human life may be fructified and developed.".

Strauss thus deals with the miraculous conception; and his dealings with the rest of the sacred life of Jesus are precisely similar. He explains so minutely the doings of Jesus-he refines sa admirably that not even the ghost of the man or god called Jesus remains; he explains and refines him into nothingness—makes him no longer real but ideal-in short, his ideas of the existence of Christ may be summed up in the expressive monosyllable-FUDGE! * Vide "Life of Jesus," first Section.

London: H. Hetherington; A. Heywood, Manchester; and all Booksellers. J. Taylor, Printer, 29, Smallbrook Street, Birmingham.

EXISTENCE OF CHRIST

AS A HUMAN BEING,

DISPROVED!

BY IRRESISTIBLE EVIDENCE, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS,

FROM A GERMAN JEW,

ADDRESSED TO CHRISTIANS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS.

LETTER 24.

WEEKLY.

ONE PENNY.

"I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour."-ISAIAH XLIII. 3, 10, 11.

CHRISTIANS,

Strauss' "Vie de Jesus," has done much damage to genuine orthodoxy. That singular work has unsettled the faith of thousands here and on the continent of Europe. The rage of Christian teachers knows no bounds; and ever since the appearance of the work in 1835, paper pellets from clerical pop-guns have been flying in all quarters; but the ammunition is, itself, too soft to do serious mischief, with whatever force or dexterity it may be propelled.

The first section of the above work, which treats of the miraculous conception, the genealogy of Jesus, &c., is invaluable as a criticism, containing matter which, if not unanswerable, has never yet been answered. The cool irony and the solemn sarcasm which pervades the whole, adds to it pungency and force; and of this we are morally certain, that any man who has the patience and courage to read carefully what is there written, will never again he disturbed by dreams about miraculous conceptions, or virgin-mothers! All ideas of that character will certainly give up the ghost when the section referred to is fairly examined. Many distinguished clergymen of the Established Church are tainted, more or less, by this new and most alarming heresy ; among the rest may be mentioned the celebrated Dr. Milner-author of the History of Christianity from the breaking up of the Roman Empire-Prebendary of Westminster,

a writer held in great repute for his learning and leaning towards heterodoxy. Nay, the breach between him and the bigots is of so serious and alarming a nature that he has even been loudly censured by the latter for eating the bread of the church, while he is leagued with German Infidels in the work of undermining its foundation.

Opposition makes some men cruel, and the determined eaters of the church's bread, who will live by the alter human folly has erected, and gasp there their last gasp, are driven by their misfortunes to desperation, and in their frenzy seem to lose at once all sense of decency and all self-control. They hate Germany—“ it is the land of thought." Germans being thinkers, have earned their abhorrence; but this work of Strauss is a dose of infidelity for which they were by no means prepared-a moral bolus they will never swallow, unless forced to do so by the dread of losing their influence. Strauss, himself, scared by the din raised about his ears, has endeavored to give a new coloring and form to the harsher points of his doctrines, leaving one more to be added to the list of men who, like Galileo and Lawrence, uttered great truths but dared not abide by them in the teeth of authority. But that Strauss, like Erasmus, had no disposition to become a martyr, may be plainly seen in his Preface to the first edition of his work, where the following ridiculous passage may be found: "The author knows that the internal essence of the Christian belief is completely independent of critical researches. The supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection, and his ascension to the sky, remain eternal truths, however we may doubt the reality of these things considered as historical facts." Any man who should first read the work itself, and then turn to the above passage in the Preface, would have his feelings oscillating between disgust and pity-disgust at this barefaced moral delinquency of a man who should prove the character of Christ a myth, or mythos, which he has himself declared to be a character made up of the sum total of the beliefs, the ideas, and the sentiments which prevail among any people with regard to some individual who was imagined or supposed to have really existed. Pity that such splendid talents should be so far bowed down by fear of persecution, or the hope of reward, as to lend himself directly or indirectly to the perpetuation of falsehood. We who have nothing to hope for, save a knowledge of the truth, and nothing to fear, if not shame, are in a condition to say the whole truth, and declare that the legitimate conclusion from Strauss' work, is, that the story of

the miraculous conception is mythic-that which is related in apocryphal books about his youth is mythic-that, in short, the whole tale from its commencement to its termination, from the conception to the resurrection, is mythic, not a history of real events, but a history of the ideas, sentiments, and beliefs of the Jewish people; and Strauss' opinion really was that, perhaps, a man called Jesus played a distinguished part in Jerusalem some eighteen hundred years ago, and that after the death of the individual a new character was manufactured for him, so that it should square and harmonize with the type of the Messiah prefigured in the traditions and sacred books of the Jews. How rankly dishonest, therefore, it is, for such a writer to declare that the idle tales told about the supernatural birth of Christ, his miracles, his resurrection and his ascension to the sky, remain eternal truths! The gospel histories are neither eternal, nor true, as Strauss himself has clearly proved.

The four gospels were, without doubt, the inventions of the early doctors of the Christian sect who, Mosheim informs us, "had been educated in the schools of the rhetoriticians and sophists, and rashly employed the arts and evasions of their subtile masters in the service of Christianity, and intent only upon defeating the enemy, they were too little attentive to the means of victory, indifferent whether they acquired it by artifice or plain dealing." Again, in the same passage, "Thus it happened through the pernicious influence, of human passions, which too often mingle themselves with the execution of the best purposes and the most upright intentions, that they who were desirous of surpassing all others in piety looked upon it as lawful, and even laudable, to advance the cause of piety by artifice and fraud." Here we have a singularly important admission from an orthodox Christian historian, which proves the utter worthlessness of the writings of the early Christian writers in support of the belief in Christ—for how can any reasonable being repose in safety, or build up a belief with the materials furnished by men who "looked upon it as lawful, and even laudable, to advance the cause of piety by artifice and fraud.” What guarantee can we have that the four gospels were not fraudulently concocted and imposed upon the world by such pious craftsmen as genuine? Whatever affects the character of those who determined which should be the divine gospels must affect our belief in the gospels themselves, unless those gospels carry with them internal evidence of their genuineness, which is so far from the fact, that the task of recon

ciling their discrepancies and contradictions has been long since given up as an interminable as well as a bad job.

"The opinions, or rather the conjectures (says Dr. Mosheim) of the learned concerning the times when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume, as also about the authors of those collections, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these latter times. It is, however, sufficient for us to know that before the middle of the second century, the greatest part of the books of the New Testament were read in every Christian society throughout the world, and received as a divine rule of faith and manner." None can fail to admire the coolness and gravity with which the worthy Doctor disposes of a difficulty. He treats difficulties and unexplained things quite cavalierly, and like the bold huntsman with his five barred gates, he seems to glory in leaping over them. The more the merrier-the more leaping the better sport in the theological hunt. Nothing can be more candid than his manner, more imperturbable than his gravity, or more conclusive than his reasonings, for the which three essentials in the character of an historian we honor him; for his candid statements have a weight and force no others could have; his gravity gives them character and respectability, while his reasonings tend to the overthrow of Christianity, for they shew that when the gospels were written is not known-that all relating to them is doubtful and uncertain; and this, remember reader, is not an Infidel but a Christian historian, not one who wished to ruin Christianity by undermining, or openly assaulting it, but a learned man who anxiously desired to strengthen and consolidate it. When he says the question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties, we agree with him; but when he adds, "It is, however, sufficient for us to know that before the middle of the second century the greatest part of the books of the New Testament were read in every Christian society," &c., we do not agree with him, for we can never be said to have sufficient knowledge of a subject till we are informed of all that vitally affects it. It is sufficient for our present purpose to shew Christian readers that the worthy Doctor, with all his learning, can give no account when the books of the New Testament were collected together-to which we may add, by whom they were collected together? So that this crack historian is constrained to acknowledge, after all his searchings, that he neither knows when