Christianity and science Author:Andrew Preston Peabody Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE III. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF AUTHENTICITY. — THE HUMAN VIRTUES OF CHRIST. — HIS ETHICAL AND RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS. — HIS INFLUENCE. — THE DIVINE SIDE OF HI... more »S CHARACTER. — HIS SUPERHUMAN WOUKS NEITHER IMPOSTURE NOR DELUSION. — ADMISSIONS OF EARLY ADVERSARIES OF CHRISTIANITY. TN my last two Lectures I have endeavored to establish - the genuineness and authenticity of our canonical Gospels, partly by adequate testimony, partly by their superficial characteristics and their relations to one another. The contents of a book have an important bearing on the question of its authenticity. There are books which cannot be believed. There are books which, unless they were true, could not have been written. No one could believe the Baron von Mun- chausen's narrative of his adventures, though it made its first public appearance under his own highly respectable name and authority. On the other hand, there was probably never a classical scholar so sceptical as not to give entire credence to Xenophon's Anabasis, — a story so coherent, so closely in accordance with all that is known of its time and scenes from other sources, and in portions so journal-like, equally in its minuteness and its vividness, that, were the book found now for the first time, without the author'sCHARACTER OF CHRIST. 47 name, the universal verdict would be that it was perfectly true throughout, and undoubtedly written by one who had borne part in some of the principal events recorded. The story, unless true, could not have been written. The object of my present Lecture is to establish this same proposition as to our canonical Gospels. They could not have been written, had they not been true. To test this statement, let us take an inventory of their contents. . The character of Jesus Christ stands out alone, ...« less