Through Nature to Christ Or, the Ascent of Worship Through Illusion to the Truth

In Through Nature to Christ Dr. Abbott announces that he believes St. John's picture of Jesus Christ to be essentially correct, really truer than that which we gain from the other three Gospels. The anonymous, unknown author has composed a more accurate and sympathetic life of Jesus of Nazareth than those that walked and talked with Him three years in daily communion! He has not reset their narratives in the burnished gold of his marvelous genius, he has written another history, the events as well as the spirit of which differ from those of the preceding biographers. The uncritical, spiritually sensitive Church cordially accepted his production; they could perceive its beauty but not its falsehood, its inner truthfulness but not its outward contradiction of their cherished records. This Church of "thaumaturgic tendencies" cast away its appetite for wonders without struggle, without protest, without hesitation, in obedience to a phantom raised at the bidding of a secret conjuror. And the very individuals who were attracted by the superior power and beauty of this latest Gospel failed to see its variance with the Gospels they had. Total blindness was conjoined with abnormal quickness of vision. The wonders have not yet ceased. The Christ of history, i.e., of the Original Tradition, belongs to "a corner of Syria;" the world-wide Saviour and Enlightener springs forth from the pages of Philo and his undiscoverable disciple. If this be so, not Jesus the Son of Mary, but Philo and the pseudo-John deserve the world's homage, gratitude, and love. But Dr. Abbott cannot content himself with these inconsistencies and incredibilities; he must reduce the theory to an absurdity himself. The Fourth Gospel issues from the Ephesian school, yet it is acceptable to the Gnostics and viewed with suspicion (at first) by the orthodox. It is the Gnostics who manifest this fine spiritual perception; and by these hated and dreaded heretics the Church condescends to be taught, and from their hands it receives "the spiritual Gospel" it had rejected as the gift of Ephesus. The theory outrages history no less than probability. -- London Quarterly , Vol. 60