Andrew Preston Peabody

Christianity the Religion of Nature: Lectures Delivered Before the Lowell Institute Andrew Preston Peabody

The author by no means claims as original the conception of Christianity as coincident with the religion of nature ;but he is not aware that precisely this line of proof or defence has been adopted in any formal treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Yet he is profoundly convinced that it is on grounds of a priori probability that the controversy between those who admit and those who deny a special, authoritative revelation through Jesus Christ is now to be waged. It is not a little singular that a priori objections took precedence of historical in the early days of the Church. We have no reason to suppose that Celsus denied the miraculous element in the Evangelical narratives. In times of ready faith as to the occult and marvellous in nature and the wonder-working power of demons, it was easy to admit the salient facts recorded in the Gospels, and yet to reject the truths which they seemed to autlienticate. The two leading considerations urged by Celsus against the new religion were its promulgation among and for the poor, uneducated, and ignoble, and its claim to universality, both which features appeared to liim so intrinsically absurd as to be incapable of proof.
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