and the Koran were inspired; he merely dispensed with all that was supernatural and miraculous and mystical!  The Deist laughed, and told him that he believed just as much, if that constituted a Christian.  “I believe,” said he, “that the New Testament is quite as much inspired as the Koran of Mahomet; and that it contains more of ethical truth (however it came there) than is to be found in any other book of equal bulk.  But,” he proceeded, “if you dispense with all that is miraculous in the facts, and all that is peculiar and characteristic in the doctrines,—­that is, all which discriminates Christianity from any other religion,—­I am afraid that your Christianity is own born brother to my Infidelity.  As for your reverence for this inspired book, since you must reject ninety per cent. of the whole, it seems to me very gratuitous; equally so, whether you suppose the compilers believed or disbelieved the facts and doctrines you reject; if the former, and they were deceived, they must have been inspired idiots; if the latter, and were deceiving others, they were surely inspired knaves.  For my part,” he continued, “while I hold that the book somehow does unaccountably contain more of the morally true and beautiful than any book of equal extent, I also hold that Christianity itself is a pure imposture from beginning to end.”

This coarse avowal of adherence to the elder, and, after all, more intelligible deism, brought down upon him at once two of the company.  One was the disciple of Strauss (I mean as regards his theory of the origin of Christianity, not as regards his Pantheism); the other a Rationalist, with about the same small tatters of Christianity fluttering about him, but who was a little disposed, like so many German theologians, to consider Strauss as somewhat passe.  Unhappily, got athwart each other’s bows shortly after they into action.  They both enlarged—­really in a edifying manner, I could have listened to them an hour—­on the absurdity of the Deist’s argument!  “What!” cried one; “the purest system of ethics from the most shameless impostors!” “And what do you make of the infinitely varied and inimitable marks of simplicity and honesty in the writers?” cried the other.  “And who does not see the impossibility of getting up the miracles so as to impose upon a world of bitter and prejudiced enemies in open day?” exclaimed the Rationalist.  “They were obviously mere myths,” cried the Straussian.  “That I must beg to doubt,” said the other.  And now, as they proceeded to give each his own solution of the difficulty, the scene became comic in the extreme.  The Rationalist ridiculed the notion that nations and races, all of whom, in the nature of things, must have been prejudiced against such myths as those of Christianity, could originate or would believe them; and still more, the notion that in so short a space of time these wildest of wild legends (if legends at all) could induce the world to acquiesce in them as historic realities!  In his zeal he even said,