Yet I had not finally renounced the _possibility_, that Jesus might have had a divine mission to stimulate all our spiritual faculties, and to guarantee to us a future state of existence.

The abstract arguments for the immortality of the soul had always appeared to me vain trifling; and I was deeply convinced that nothing could _assure_ us of a future state but a divine communication.

In what mode this might be made, I could not say _a priori_: might not this really be the great purport of Messiahship?
was not this, if any, a worthy ground for a divine interference?
On the contrary, to heal the sick did not seem at all an adequate motive for a miracle; else, why not the sick of our own day?
Credulity had exaggerated, and had represented Jesus to have wrought miracles: but that did not wholly _dis_prove the miracle of resurrection (whether bodily or of whatever kind), said to have been wrought by God _upon_ him, and of which so very intense a belief so remarkably propagated itself.

Paul indeed believed it[3] from prophecy; and, as we see this to be a delusion, resting on Rabbinical interpretations, we may perhaps _account_ thus for the belief of the early church, without in any way admitting the fact .-- Here, however, I found I had the clue to my only remaining discussion, the primitive Jewish controversy.

Let us step back to an earlier stage than John's or Paul's or Peter's doctrine.