"But as there is an immense disparity between humanity and divinity—between a perfect man, and God manifest in the flesh—what effect did the first announcement of the divinity of Jesus Christ produce on your mind? Did it not startle you?"
"I felt an instinctive revolting against it. I felt more disposed to treat it as a legend, than look upon it as a fact."
"But why?"
"Because I thought it was not likely that God would manifest himself in the flesh, when he could so easily accomplish any beneficent purpose without stooping to such an act of humiliation and meanness. Indeed, for a very long time the more I thought of it the more I revolted against it. I loathed it, it was offensive to my taste; and I did not like to hear the question argued."
"But did it never strike you, when reading the gospels, that Jesus Christ attempted to make the Jews believe that he was a Divine incarnation? I suppose you must have read the following passage—'The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God' (John x. 33)?"
"Why, yes; but I thought their accusation against him on this point, was a wilful perversion of his meaning—an excess on their part of malignant feeling."
"But did you never receive an impression, from the facility with which he performed many stupendous works, and his entire avoidance of all pomp and display, that he was a wonderful Being, something more than man?"
"Why, no. The truth is, I never felt sufficient interest in the question to pursue the investigation of it with attention. I revolted from it."
"But when you were forced to attend to it, in some measure, by the frequency of its discussion amongst Friends, did any other reason present itself to your mind as a constraint, or an inducement to reject it as a mere legend?"
"Yes; the absolute impossibility that two such dissimilar natures, as the Divine and human, could be united in one person."