One of our Sunday programs, the other day, found its way into a church. It went farther; it made its appearance in the pulpit.

"In my hand I hold the notice of a publication bearing the title Is Jesus a Myth?" said Dr. Boyle. "This, too, just as though Paul never bore testimony."

This gave the clergyman a splendid opportunity to present in clear and convincing form the evidence for the reality of Jesus. But one thing prevented him:—the lack of evidence.

Therefore, after announcing the subject, he dismissed it, by remarking that Paul's testimony was enough.

The Rev. Morton Culver Hartzell, in a letter, offers the same argument. "Let Mr. Mangasarian first disprove Paul," he writes. The argument in a nutshell is this: Jesus is historical because he is guaranteed by Paul.

But who guarantees Paul?

Aside from the fact that the Jesus of Paul is essentially a different
Jesus from the gospel Jesus there still remains the question, Who is
Paul? Let us see how much the church scholars themselves know about
Paul:

"The place and manner and occasion of his death are not less uncertain than the facts of his later life…The chronology of the rest of his life is as uncertain…We have no means of knowing when he was born, or how long he lived, or at what dates the several events of his life took place."

Referring to the epistles of Paul, the same authority says: "The chief of these preliminary questions is the genuineness of the epistles bearing Paul's name, which if they be his"—yes, IF—

The Christian scholar whose article on Paul is printed in the Britannica, and from which we are now quoting, gives further expression to this uncertainty by adding that certain of Paul's epistles "have given rise to disputes which cannot easily be settled in the absence of collateral evidence…The pastoral epistles…have given rise to still graver questions, and are probably even less defensible."

Let the reader remember that the above is not from a rationalist, but from the Rev. Edwin Hatch, D. D., Vice-Principal, St. Mary Hall, Oxford, England.

Were we disposed to quote rationalist authorities, the argument against Paul would be far more decisive. But we are satisfied to rest the case on orthodox admissions alone.

The strongest argument then of clergymen who have attempted an answer to our position is something like this:

Jesus is historical because a man by the name of Paul says so, though we do not know much about Paul.

It is just such evidence as the above that led Prof. Goldwin Smith to exclaim: "Jesus has flown. I believe the legend of Jesus was made by many minds working under a great religious impulse—one man adding a parable, another an exhortation, another a miracle story;"—and George Eliot to write: "The materials for a real life of Christ do not exist."

In the effort to untie the Jesus-knot by Paul, the church has increased the number of knots to two. In other words, the church has proceeded on the theory that two uncertainties make a certainty.

We promised to square also with the facts of history our statement that the chief concern of the church, Jewish, Christian, or Mohammedan, is not righteousness, but orthodoxy.