There has been a tendency of recent years to sneer at the evidential school of the last century, as if Lardner, Paley, and the rest had failed in the task they set themselves, and as if their failure did not much matter to us who have a more sure foundation for our faith. Such sneers indicate a complete failure to apprehend that ours is a historical religion, the cardinal tenet of which is that some eighteen centuries ago there was in this world One who was like no one else who ever lived in the world, and who then did a work for the benefit of the world which none but He could have accomplished. All those celebrations of the Christian year of which I spoke are nothing but an expanded expression of our faith in the articles of the baptismal creed. Without such faith I do not see how anyone can rightly call himself a Christian.
George Salmon, Non-miraculous Christianity: And Other Sermons Preached in the Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin (London: Macmillan and Co., 1881), pp. 3-4
Tags: George Salmon, History and Christianity, Non-Miraculous Christianity
