Christianity, I am not considering Christianity at all, I reply, Not so;
I am not writing a theological, but a philosophical treatise, and shall
consider Christianity merely as one of many religions, though, of
course, the latest, &c. Thus considered, Christianity takes its place as
the highest manifestation of evolution in this department of the human
mind; but I am not concerned even with so important an ecclesiastical
dogma as that of the Incarnation of God in Christ. As far as this
treatise has to go, that dogma may or may not be true. The important
question for us is, Has God spoken through the medium of our religious
instincts? And although this will necessarily involve the question
whether or how far in the case of Christianity there is objective
evidence of His having spoken by the mouth of holy men [of the Old
Testament] which have been since the world began, such will be the case
only because it is a question of objective evidence whether or how far
the religious instincts of these men, or this race of men, have been so
much superior to those of other men, or races of men, as to have enabled
them to predict future events of a religious character. And whether or
not in these latter days God has spoken by His own Son is not a question
for us, further than to investigate the higher class of religious
phenomena which unquestionably have been present in the advent and
person of Jesus. The question whether Jesus was the Son of God, is,
logically speaking, a question of ontology, which, _quâ_ pure agnostics,
we are logically forbidden to touch.

But elsewhere I ought to show that, from my point of view as to the
fundamental question being whether God has spoken at all through the
religious instincts of mankind, it may very well be that Christ was not
God, and yet that He gave the highest revelation of God. If the 'first
Man' was allegorical, why not the 'second'? It is, indeed, an historical
fact that the 'second Man' existed, but so likewise may the 'first.'