CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 2, 1 November 1883, Page 12

CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE FREETIIOUGIIT REVIEW. Sir. ln 'the discussion which followed the reading of a paper before the Wanganui Freethought Association, entitled “ The Divine Origin of Christianity,” the author Mr. Grant stated, that even the great infidel writer Strauss had to admit that the resurrection of Jesus was an authenticated fact; and tried to escape from this fact by the lame assumption that Jesus was not dead but only insensible when cut down from the cross. Now I have Strauss’s “New Life of Jesus,” and can confidently assert,without fear of contradiction, that in no place does he make such an assertion. True, he mentions such an hypothesis as having been advanced in different forms by Herder, Paulus, Schleirmacher, andHase, but he himself in a masterly manner refutes the explanation as unsatisfacory and fanciful; and shows first, from the inconsistencies and contradictions of the Gospel accounts, how uuhistoric is the evidence; and secondly, how natural it was such myths should arise in the early Church ; inasmuch as it was necessary to show how superior Jesus was in death to the lesser lights, Moses, Enoch and Elijah. For Mr. Grant to have made such a statement, shows great ignorance of the writings of what he was pleased to call the ‘ ‘ infidel Strauss.” I am, &c., R.