The Jewish faith was eminently grand and pure; but there is nothing[11] in this history which we can adduce in proof of preternatural and miraculous agency.
II.

The facts concerning the outward spread of Christianity have also been disguised by the party spirit of Christians, as though there were something essentially _different in kind_ as to the mode in which it began and continued its conquests, from the corresponding history of other religions.

But no such distinction can be made out.

It is general to all religions to begin by moral means, and proceed farther by more worldly instruments.
Christianity had a great moral superiority over Roman paganism, in its humane doctrine of universal brotherhood, its unselfishness, its holiness; and thereby it attracted to itself (among other and baser materials) all the purest natures and most enthusiastic temperaments.
Its first conquests were noble and admirable.

But there is nothing _superhuman_ or unusual in this.