Before examining the details of Mr. N.'s book, I would yet make a general remark.
The kind of opposition men make to Christianity proves its truth in the main-proves in it the consciousness of a real claim of God on the soul.
No doubt men have attacked Paganism as false. They have resisted Mohammedanism, though its sword was its principal argument, so that there was less of this.
But the constant and laborious exercise of free criticism, the close and sifting examination the Bible has gone through for ages, the anxious research after errors or contradictions within, proves anxiety to show that it is not what it pretends to be. Why all this anxiety? Those not immediately under the influence of Mohammedanism are long satisfied that it is false, and leave it there; but these minute researches after a flaw in the scriptures continue-are repeated-renewed. Men take it up on every side. Astronomy and geology are called in aid. Geography is ransacked: history, antiquity, style, manuscripts of all kinds, foolish writings of the fathers, absurd writings of heretics, apocryphal imitations of its contents; nothing left unturned to find something to discredit it; wise writings of philosophers to prove they could do as well, or were the source of the good, or even of the alleged absurdities of doctrine; every other influence sought out which could have moralized humanity, that it may not be supposed to be this. Why all this toil? Why, if it be a doctrine like Plato's, should it not have produced its effect, and our philosophers be as cool about it as about other things? It has-their conscience knows it has-God's claim and God's truth in it; and they will not allow that the true God, that Christ, is the source of it; for then they must bend, and admit what man is.
And this shows itself in the most curious way. Though they pretend to think nothing of Christ, or that He was an impostor, they will not allow that the authorized books of His religion give a true account of the doctrines of the religion. If I read the Koran, I am satisfied to take it as the account of Mohammedanism, absurd as it may be; and I say Mohammedanism is absurd. So of the Vedas and Puranas.
But when the christian books are in question, not only are they charged with error, contradiction, &c., but the free critics will not even allow them to teach the real Christianity after all. They are not a true, not an authentic account of Christianity. Why (if it be a mere fable, an imposture) so difficult about the exactitude of the account of it? Surely the main propagators can give a sufficient account of the imposture and its doctrines, for anything that concerns us. But no. There is the consciousness that God is in Christianity. The conscience, in spite of the will, knows it has to do with God here; and it wants a true revelation, a real and authentic account of what that God is. It is right. But though curiosity and a favorite subject may absorb many for a time, or an individual all his life, men are not so continuously, so perseveringly anxious to get at the truth of a fable. They do not reject the sacred books of any other religion, as not being a true account of that religion. They take them as they are, because they know they are a fable; or, even if it be known to be the work of men's minds, it is the same. A stranger to Lutheranism takes the symbolical books of Lutheranism as being Lutheranism, let him agree to or dissent from them. Why not the christian books as stating Christianity? An infidel cannot let God and His truth alone, because it is His truth. He is a zealot against it; for his will is engaged. He is a bitter zealot because his conscience is uneasy. He will laugh at a Mohammedan carpenter, who thinks he only has the true religion; he will curse a consistent Christian who thinks he has, and denounce and abhor such if they do not let him amongst them when he denies their Lord, and only wish for energy and all needed to proclaim their deeds. Why this difference?