"Would not that, then," I ventured to ask, impatiently, "make Jesus as
much of an idol as Apollo? And are not these people on their knees
before a god of whose existence they are as much in the dark as were
the Greeks of fair Apollo, and of whose past they have only rumors
such as Homer reports of our Olympian gods--as idolatrous as the
Athenians? What would you say," I asked my guide, "if I were to demand
that you should produce Jesus and prove him to my eyes and ears as you
have asked me to produce and prove Apollo? What is the difference
between a ceremony performed in honor of Apollo and one performed in
honor of Jesus, since it is as impossible to give oracular
demonstration of the existence of the one as of the other? If Jesus is
alive and a god, and Apollo is an idol and dead, what is the evidence,
since the one is as invisible, as inaccessible, and as unproducible as
the other? And, if faith that Jesus is a god proves him a god, why
will not faith in Apollo make him a god? But if worshipping Jesus,
whom for the best part of the last two thousand years no man has seen,
heard or touched; if building temples to him, burning incense upon his
altars, bowing at his shrine and calling him "God," is not idolatry,
neither is it idolatry to kindle fire upon the luminous altars of the
Greek Apollo,--God of the dawn, master of the enchanted lyre--he with
the bow and arrow tipped with fire! I am not denying," I said, "that
Jesus ever lived. He may have been alive two thousand years ago, but
if he has not been heard from since, if the same thing that happened
to the people living at the time he lived has happened to him, namely--if
he is dead, then you are worshipping the dead, which fact stamps
your religion as idolatrous."

And, then, remembering what he had said to me about the Greek
mythology being beautiful but not true, I said to him: "Your temples
are indeed gorgeous and costly; your music is grand; your altars are