“The German Lessing has well said that ‘the first and oldest opinion in matters of speculation is always the most probable, because common sense immediately hit upon it.’ And, converging to the same conclusion, an English writer, borrowing, however, from the Greek, has said that ‘both Philosophy and Romance take their origin in wonder;’ and that ‘sometimes Romance, in the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its votaries toward the same goal to which Philosophy leads the illuminated student.’
“The early ages of the world were ages of romance.
“In this supreme case, Imagination, with her wings of a butterfly and her wings of an eagle, soared till her strength failed at a height that was half heaven, half earth. To this same point philosophy climbed her slow and cautious way. They found Faith already there, waiting from the beginning of time at the feet of the God made Man.
“Again, these apostles of skepticism will tell you that the superstitions of the time, and the prophesies concerning Christ, favored his pretensions.
“If Christ had been an impostor, or self-deceived,—the King’s Majesty pardon me the supposition!—in either case he would have striven to conform as much as possible to the prejudices of that expectation; and he would have taken advantage of the popular enthusiasm, as impostors and visionaries do. Instead of that, he set up a pure spiritual system and acted on it consistently, obedient (the Scripture says) unto death. He flattered no one. He boldly reproved the very ones whose support he might naturally have desired. In the height of his fame he predicted his martyrdom.
“Nor was that time more superstitious than the present, nor the followers of Christ more credulous than people of to-day, and not among the ignorant alone. It is, in fact, notable how many proofs they required. I should say that the Apostles were hard to convince, considering the wonders they had seen. How many times had Jesus to say to them, O ye of little faith!
“When the women went to the sepulchre, it was not to meet a risen Lord, but to embalm and mourn over a dead one. When Mary Magdalen went to tell the Apostles that Jesus had risen, her words seemed to them an idle tale, and they believed it not. But Peter went to see. He ran, Saint Luke says. He saw the empty grave, the linen cloths laid by; and he went away wondering, not yet believing, though Magdalen had testified to having seen and spoken with Jesus, and had given them a message from him, though he had predicted his own resurrection, and though Lazarus and the ruler’s daughter were still among them. Does this look like credulity?
“It is not for the present to reproach the past with superstition, now when every wildest fantasy flourishes unchecked. Some turn their longing eyes back to the old mythologies. Like the early Christian gnostics, they like to flatter themselves by professing an occult worship which the vulgar cannot understand, and building an inner sanctuary of belief where chosen ones may gather, veiled from the multitude. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the day may not be far distant when, in lands called Christian, temples and altars may again be erected to Jove, Cybele, Diana, Osiris, and the rest.
“The mind, like the body, may, perhaps, feel from time to time a need to change its position. But the body, in all its movements, seeks instinctively to keep its equilibrium. The equilibrium of the soul is in its position toward its Creator.
“The paganism of to-day has this evil which the earlier had not: it is a step in a descending scale. In those other days mankind seemed to be rising from the abyss of some immemorial disaster, of which all nations have some fragmentary tradition. In Christ the human race reached its climax. He was the height of an epoch which now, perhaps, declines to a new cataclysm.