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"Good, Stuart," answered Granger, with much feeling. "Unless you can go on with me in this inquiry, our friendship can never be in the future what it has been in the past; for we are bound to drift apart. Now, I don't see why a man should be afraid of truth and facts, or afraid of his own reason, his own brains, whether God-given or howsoever he came by them. What you and I are after is truth. I believe we have had an honest, truthful presentation of the subject by Dr. Harlow, as far as he has gone and in the parts of the field which he has covered. I am frank to say that I like his Sunday morning sermons better than those of any orthodox preacher I ever heard. And you know how careful he always seems in his lectures to avoid dogmatizing and to qualify every assertion where he thinks the testimony is not ample in support of it. One can hardly fail to be convinced that Dr. Harlow means to be, and knows how to be, and is, candid, fair, and just. But that is not all. We are not limited to his assertion for proof; and I have been steadily following him up and consulting the authorities to which he refers, with a view to satisfying myself independently as to the correctness of his position. And for myself, I have determined that if the truth is different from what I have heretofore believed, I will accepf it with all its consequences, whithersoever it may lead and whatever idols it may shatter."

But what are we to get in place of our past belief?" asked Craig.

"Truth, truth, truth! Is it nothing to get truth in place of falsehood?"

"But what truth?"

"What truth? Is it not half the truth to disprove the error? And if what we have believed is false, shall we go on hugging a lie to our bosoms until we are sure we can find something else seemingly as tangible to replace it? Isn't our first duty to reject untruth wherever and whenever we see it? Gregory somebody thought he had squared the circle, and his solution of the great problem was apparently correct. But along came Descartes after awhile and pricked the bubble. Now, are we to refuse to accept Descartes's demonstration of the falsity of Gregory's formula, because Descartes himself couldn't square the circle? * Suppose the circle can't be squared!"

After a long pause Craig replied:

But

“Yes, I see the resistless force of that reasoning. it's like tearing out our very vitals to wrest away these lifelong beliefs."

"Well, how about the belief in Santa Claus, fairies, witches, demons, ghosts, and other superhuman beings that peopled your childish fancy? Are they not all gone, and your vitals still intact?”

Craig looked a little shocked at this reply, and responded: "It seems profane, sacrilegious, Paul, to compare the question of the divinity of Jesus Christ with the mythical Santa Claus."

"You are starting at the wrong end of the chain, Stuart. Suppose you inquire first whether it is true that the one is a myth as well as the other; and then, whether truth can ever be profane or sacrilegious; for if it can, then untruth must be religious, holy. You see what sort of a tangle you get into when you adopt that line of reasoning. The trouble is, Stuart, we have been taught all our lives to think not only that our religion is true but that it is beyond the scope of human reason and is not to be measured by the standards of human truth and justice. I am glad to say that I have at last reached a state of mental freedom where I believe it right and proper to seek the truth and then square my religion by that.'

"You are right, Paul," exclaimed Craig. "It needs no reflection to convince me. It's the only reasonable and manly view to take of it,

"Of course," answered Granger; "it would be cowardly to think otherwise. You have never yet hung back, I am sure, from any inquiry lest the result should upset a preconceived notion, and I hardly thought you would begin now."

"But I wish you would give me an outline," said Craig, "of the course of thought along which the lectures and your own reading have led you. I believe it might help me into a more settled and satisfactory state of mind."

"I don't think I can do that just yet," answered Granger after a moment's thought. "The matter has not taken definite enough shape in my own mind. But if you will wait a week or two I shall be glad to discuss it more fully with you. The fact is, Stuart, I have given a good deal more time and thought to this study all winter than to my University work, and I believe with farther-reaching and

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more important results than I have gained from any other line of study that I have taken up during the whole four years. You know"-with a smile-"I was 'cut out' for a preacher. The strongest influences around me in childhood were such as to awaken and foster in me an uncommon degree of religious feeling and interest in religious things; and those influences are now bearing fruit--though not exactly the sort of fruit intended."

CHAPTER 24

ONE OF THE WORLD'S NUMEROUS CRUCIFIED SAVIORS

ONE, two, three weeks went by, and still Granger did not announce himself ready to fulfil his promise. But on the fourth Sunday afternoon he and Craig resumed their joint consideration of the great theme that engaged their thoughts.

"It is useless," said Granger, "for us to go over the ground again as we have heard it treated in Dr. Harlow's lectures. What you want, as I understood it, is rather that I shall tell you something about what I have found in reading, and especially the shape the whole matter has taken in my own mind. That's the sort of an account I should have to give you anyhow, because I have gone into the subject from a purely personal standpoint, solely for my own information and satisfaction, without feeling bound to make a complete and exhaustive examination; and yet I have been careful to go far enough to be absolutely certain that I had got at the essential facts and reached the only reasonable conclusion.

"Almost at the outset I decided that the things I needed to settle were, (1) the character and teaching of Jesus, (2) the credibility of the four Gospels of the New Testament, and (3) the origin of the church creeds. It would be too tedious and complex for us to attempt to go over all the points in debate regarding the authenticity and credibility of the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life and teaching. In my own inquiry I have studiously avoided the vast mass of minor discussion and confusing details, and stuck closely to a few leading points that appear to be vital and at the same time comparatively easy to grasp and determine. I

have really been surprised to find how easy it is, when once you are in the right frame of mind, to get at the gist of the case for and against the claims of Christianity to divine origin, resting as those claims do upon the New Testament Scriptures. It is simply a question of the reliability of the four Gospels.

"It is a matter for profound regret that, unlike most great founders of religions, Jesus, as far as is known, put nothing in writing; doubtless for the reason that he could not write. Moreover, we have nothing recorded verbatim at the time he said it, nothing written out in substance either at the time he said it or immediately afterwards, much less anything submitted to him for revision or approval. Archdeacon Farrar says that Jesus 'had no human learning,' and that his followers were unlearned and ignorant men.' Now, it is clear that 'had no human learning' is simply a theological euphemism for 'couldn't read or write.'"

But what difference does that make if the Gospel writers were inspired?" inquired Craig.

"True enough; we will come to that later. Unless the four Gospels of the New Testament are reliable, there appears to be no record from which we can learn with certainty or exactness what Jesus did teach, either as to his own nature and mission, or as to the manner of life men should lead. It is the four Gospels or nothing; and the value of these Gospels depends on the truth of the twofold orthodox declaration: first, that the so-called Gospels of Matthew and John were written by two of the traditional twelve Apostles of Jesus, and the so-called Gospels of Mark and Luke by companions of some of the twelve Apostles; and secondly, that these Gospel writers were divinely inspired to record truth and truth only. The vital question, then, is, What is the ground for this assertion as to the authorship and inspiration of the four Gospels? It must be either external or internal evidence, either the testimony of men or the character of the writings themselves. And first for the testimony of men.

"I was more astonished than I can tell you to learn that the authentic history of the four Gospels as they have come down to us, even with all the variations of reading in the different copies, does not begin till about two hundred years after Christ. If the Gospels existed earlier than that, we have no trustworthy evidence of the fact, no decisive state

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ments to that effect in the writings of the first century. It is not unlikely that it was even well on towards the close of the second century before these particular Gospels were written. Indeed, it seems to be absolutely impossible to trace them back to the first century. I say impossible, because it has never yet been done, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts to accomplish it; and it is fair to presume that, if possible, it would have been done before now." "How can you speak so positively about it?" asked Craig. "Have you been over all the ground yourself?" “No, of course not," answered Granger. "I don't mean to say that I have searched all the writings of all the writers, secular and religious, from the time of Jesus to the date when the history of the four Gospels becomes in some measure reliable. But I have got at enough of those writings to satisfy any reasonably mind in search of the truth. And as to the rest of the early accounts, when I take second-hand testimony and opinion, both for and against the value of the Gospels, and when I decide for myself what weight I will give to that testimony, I am simply doing, mind you, what the great mass of men, ministers as well as laymen, must do; because few men have the natural bent of mind, or get the requisite preparation in the study. of languages, history, and the value of evidence, or can get access to the original documents necessary to enable them to form a reliable independent opinion; and still fewer approach the study from the standpoint of unbiased search for truth. Obviously, the man who firmly believes the Christian dogmas as to Jesus and the Gospels, and not merely expects to go on so believing all his life but is determined to do so, is, to say the least, quite as unfitted mentally to sift and weigh the evidence for and against the Christian creeds as is the strongest opponent of those creeds.

"Moreover, critical study and fair judgment are made very difficult, especially for a devout believer, from the fact that the authorities in the early ages are almost all on the side of Christianity, and the writers must therefore be taken with allowance. They are often vitally interested in the events they describe, perhaps with their own reputations at stake; or at any rate they are devout believers, looking at everything from the Christian standpoint and bent on vindicating their religion. Many important writ