SHOWING HIM A MIRACLE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 24, 11 October 1873, Page 12

SHOWING HIM A MIRACLE.

The following is full of interest to the readers of the beautiful translation appearing weekly in our pages. Ernest Renan having said in his " Life of Jesus " tha thei proper way of proving a miracle is to Bhow one, a pamphleteer <l shows " one in a letter " Upon the Establishment of the Christian Eelieion " which we here translate : - 6 ' Sib:— Permit me to-day to draw your attention again to the establishment of the Christian religion— a face upon which wenaturaily differ in opinion. Like you, when I have striven to identify its cause with the mere forces of man, I have failed in my endeavor. The supernatural, then, has been the only conducting thread whioh has helped me to escape from the labyrinth, where I Bee you continually seeking to rectify yourself, without ever doing it, and condemned to escape therefrom only when you shall have proved that there is nothing miraculous in the establishment of Christianity. Pardon this little digression ; Igo straight to the work. There is a religion called the Christian, whose founder was Jesu*, named the Christ. This religion, which has lasted eighteen centuries, and which calls itself the natural development of that Judaism which, ascends near to the cradle of the world, had the apostles for its first propagators. When these men wished *o establish it they had for adversaries.: The national pride of the Jews. The implacable hatred of the Sanhedrim. The brutal despotism of the Roman Emperors. The railleries and attacks of the philosophers. The libertinism and caste-spirit of the pagan priests. The savage and cruel ignorance of the masses. The faggot and bloody games of the circus. They had an enemy in : Every miser. Every murderer. Every debauched man. .Every proud mail. Every drunkard. Every slanderer. Every thief. ' Every liar. Not one of the vices, in fact, which abuse our poor humanity which did not constitute itself their adversary. To corrbat so maty enemies and surmount so many obstacles, they had only . Their ignorance. Their weakness. Their poverty. , Their fewness. Their obscurity. The Cross. If you had been their contemporary at the moment when they began their, work, and Peter had said to you, " Join with us, for we are going to the conquest of the world j before our word pagan temples shall crumble, and their idols shall fall upon their faces ; the philosophers shall be convicted of folly ; from the throne of Caesar we shall hurl the Boman eagle, and in its place we shall plant the cross ; we shall be the teachers of the world ; the ignorant and the learned will be our disciples !" — heariLg him speak thus, you would have said, "Be silent, imbecile !" And as you are tolerant from nature and principle, you would have defended him before the Sanhedrim, and have counseled it to shut up the fisherman of Bethsaida and his companions in a mad house. And yet, sir, what you would have thought a notable madness is to-day a startling reality, with which I leave you face to face.