Perhaps the qualities which we observe in the religion may be thought to
prove something more. They would have been extraordinary had the
religion come from any person; from the person from whom it did come,
they are exceedingly so. What was Jesus in external appearance? A Jewish
peasant, the son of a carpenter, living with his father and mother in a
remote province of Palestine, until the time that he produced himself in
his public character. He had no master to instruct or prompt him; he had
read no books but the works of Moses and the prophets; he had visited no
polished cities; he had received no lessons from Socrates or
Plato,--nothing to form in him a taste or judgment different from that
of the rest of his countrymen, and of persons of the same rank of life
with himself. Supposing it to be true, which it is not, that all his
points of morality might be picked out of Greek and Roman writings, they
were writings which he had never seen. Supposing them to be no more than
what some or other had taught in various times and places, he could not
collect them together.
Who were his coadjutors in the undertaking,--the persons into whose
hands the religion came after his death? A few fishermen upon the lake
of Tiberias, persons just as uneducated, and, for the purpose of framing
rules of morality, as unpromising as himself.
Pages:
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363