Village books

He
modified his letter to the Press about "Darwin among the Machines"
and, so modified, it appeared in 1865 as "The Mechanical Creation"
in the Reasoner, a paper then published in London by Mr. G. J.
Holyoake. And his mind returned to the considerations which had
determined him to decline to be ordained. In 1865 he printed
anonymously a pamphlet which he had begun in New Zealand, the result
of his study of the Greek Testament, entitled The Evidence for the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ as given by the four Evangelists
critically examined. After weighing this evidence and comparing one
account with another, he came to the conclusion that Jesus Christ
did not die upon the cross. It is improbable that a man officially
executed should escape death, but the alternative, that a man
actually dead should return to life, seemed to Butler more
improbable still and unsupported by such evidence as he found in the
gospels. From this evidence he concluded that Christ swooned and
recovered consciousness after his body had passed into the keeping
of Joseph of Arimathaea.


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