ON THE SUPERNATURAL ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE THEORIES OF RENAN, STRAUSS, AND BY REV. GEORGE Pa FISHER, D. D. = PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN YALE COLLEGE. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., No. 654 BROADWAY. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO., In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. 1210 .F580 JOHN F. TROW & Co., PRINTERS, STEREOTYPERS, & ELECTROTYPERS, 50 GREENE STREET, N. Y. PREFACE. ALTHOUGH this volume does not claim the character of a complete treatise, yet the Essays which compose it form a connected whole and deal with the most important aspects of the general theme under which they are placed. That theme is the origin of the religion of Christ-whether it be "from heaven or of men.' The validity of the distinction between the Natural and the Supernatural is assumed, and something is done in various parts of the work-for example, in the Essay on Miracles-to elucidate this distinction. The fact of the constant presence and agency of God in Nature is held to be perfectly consistent with the proposition that the world is a reality distinct from Him. This being his theme, the author has deliberately abstained, as far as was practicable, from discussing the special questions involved in the subject of Inspiration, such as the alleged discrepancies between the various Gospel narratives. The question here considered is not that of Inspiration, but of Revelation. A great advantage is secured by keeping these two topics apart, and I have given heed to the canon of Paley that "substantial truth is that which, in every historical inquiry, ought to be the first thing sought after and ascertained." The portion of this work which has lately appeared in the form of Articles in Theological Reviews, has been much revised and, it is hoped, rendered more worthy to be submitted to the public. Especially is this true of the Essay on the Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, which has undergone not only a careful revision, but also a material amplification, since its first publication in the Bibliotheca Sacra. And in this place I gladly express my acknowledgments to an accurate scholar, Mr. Ezra Abbot, of Harvard College Library, for a number of important suggestions, as well as corrections, which he has kindly communicated to me, and of which I have availed myself in the present edition of that Essay. In the preparation of these dissertations, the author has chiefly made use of German writers, because in Germany these subjects have been canvassed of late with more earnestness and a greater outlay of learning than elsewhere. Germany has been the theatre not |